


The Weight of History

by Reign_of_Rayne



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angels and Demons, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, marco is already done with everything and he doesn't even know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:06:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reign_of_Rayne/pseuds/Reign_of_Rayne
Summary: Court Magician Marco accidentally summons two demons to aid him in capturing a traitor who nearly killed a fellow knight and stole an invaluable amulet. They must stop him before he uses it to gain unimaginable power.





	1. The Summoning

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! I'm (briefly) back to post this story, which is entirely inspired by and based on the work of an amazing artist. You can find that artist on tumblr, on the blog Justm3h. Check out their work - it's all incredible!

* * *

 

**A brief series of links:[Justm3h's blog](http://justm3h.tumblr.com)** , [the permission post to write this story](http://justm3h.tumblr.com/post/170086021262/hey-im-a-writer-who-saw-your-recent-post-for-the%20), [THE AMAZING ART](http://justm3h.tumblr.com/post/169059988282/fantasy-au-for-masbingo-court-magician-marco), [the post on my Tumblr with the same links](http://one-piece-drabbles.tumblr.com/post/170712645683/the-weight-of-history)

 

* * *

 

**INDEX**

_This is an incomplete list of terms found within the story included to ease understanding of certain references and phrases._

Angel: A divine being with powers over life and death. Reside in the Upper Realms and are sworn to avoid interfering in the affairs of mortals. Signature characteristics include wings, an internal "glow," and white eyes with no iris or pupil.

Ascension: act of "rising" and becoming an angel.

Contract: (in magic) a document forged with magic that binds a being to the will of another through explicit terms and agreements. Typically signed in blood with an individual's true name.

Court: a collection of nobles, merchants, and other prestigious members of society allowed to stay at the castle.

Court Magician: A position in the royal Court given to one exceptional magician by the king. The magician is directly (and only) loyal to the king.

_Czichen:_ infernal curse. Requires pronunciation only demons can truly achieve.

Demon: An infernal being often possessing elemental powers and extreme physical capabilities. Reside in the Lower Realms and have been sealed there for centuries by the angels. Signature characteristics include horns, fangs, a tail, and red eyes with white irises and no pupils.

Eastern Isles: A chain of islands to the East of the mainland, home to nobility with a particular form of dress that the demon Sabo imitates.

Glamour: a magical spell to change one's appearance. Adj: glamoured.

_Inflike:_ infernal curse. Requires pronunciation only demons can truly achieve.

Knights Mobius: The Knight Order of Whitebeard's kingdom, charged with the protection of the realm and its peoples.

Lower Realms: Home of the demons.

Mage: An old word for "magician." Fell out of use 100-200 years ago.

Northern Tundra: A region to the north of Whitebeard's kingdom prone to extreme winter weather. Has a sparse, scattered population skilled in hunting and gathering who often hire themselves out as mercenaries to get supplies for their communities.

Ogre: a race of creatures known for their humanoid appearance, massive stature, and rough skin.

Sunken Lands: place of banishment, far to the south of Whitebeard's kingdom.

The Purges: a time before the Great War during which anyone suspected of having nonhuman ancestry was hunted and killed.

 

* * *

**The Weight of History**

* * *

 

 It was reckless. Unbelievably reckless. Possibly the most reckless thing he'd ever done in his career as Court Magician.

But it had to be done.

Marco finished preparing the spell and stepped back, the end of his blue, single-shoulder cape momentarily suspended in front of him before it bowed to gravity and fell behind. His sandals hit the tiled floor and the sound echoed among the vaulted ceilings of his chambers. He paused on his way to the protective circle he had painstakingly carved into the floor, a sudden need prompting him to recheck the defensive wards around the doors and windows. While this room was in the top of the tower he had requisitioned for his sole use and was far and away the most warded building in the entirety of the castle, Marco could not banish the niggling doubt in his stomach.

The feeling had no basis, not really. This was a complex summoning spell, yes, but certainly not one that was outside of Marco's abilities. He simply had to calm down and focus.

He stepped into the circle. The warded shutters over the windows closed with a single word, plunging the room into near-complete darkness save for the candles flickering along the walls. Marco took a deep breath and gripped his crystal-tipped wooden staff. The magic the staff contained could level a city if improperly channeled, but the blue crystal wrapped in the wood pulsed with a warm, almost golden light.

Now or never.

He raised the staff and concentrated. The other crystals that had been placed at strategic locations along the summoning runes resonated with the one in Marco's staff and rose. The nearest one began to emanate blue light, followed by the next, and the next, until Marco was surrounded by glowing blue crystals about the length of his forearm.

All sound in the room grew muted, indistinct, as though muffled by thick walls. Marco tied himself to the energies that swirled around the ancient stones hovering in the air and, when he sensed that the time was right, began to speak.

The words were not so much words as reflections; each one plucked the string of a different instrument of reality to produce a harmony that bent the universe's laws with ease. The sounds rolled out of Marco to a rhythmic beat ordained by the energy coursing through him.

The spell went on. The crystals grew to be painfully bright and began to spin. Beams of pure energy shot from one to the next, creating a massive barrier as previously invisible patterns in the floor began to glow with the same light.

Marco ignored the trembling in his muscles and kept his focus on maintaining the bridges between himself, the crystals, and the universe. Inexperienced magicians could lose themselves in these connections and go mad; at the moment, Marco was more concerned with rupturing a connection and having the spell implode. A summoning on this scale, with so much power in play, if mishandled, could destroy the entire tower in an instant the way no trebuchet ever could.

The final crystal made its connection and the entire network began to vibrate, making the very air thrum with energy.

This was it. Marco's voice rose in volume, tearing apart the veils between worlds one shattered syllable at a time.

And then he stumbled.

It wasn't a big mistake—a couple of mispronounced syllables, slanted in rhyme but not broken, microscopic in the grand scale, but those syllables completed a different chord and the entire song changed. Marco, caught in the tides of the spell and fully aware that stopping now would mean his death, forged on with beads of sweat sliding down his spine.

When he declared the final line and slammed his staff into the floor, all the energy his staff had been building erupted out onto the floor, screaming along the runic lines and ripping the lines of reality until, with a great flash, the energy dissipated.

Marco stood straight and, as the crystals continued to hover and paint the chamber in soft blue light, regarded the results of his spell.

Two figures had appeared on the summoning circle: one heavily clothed in black and blue, dressed almost like a noble of the Eastern Isles, with pale skin, blond hair, and gray horns extending for several inches from just above and behind his temples. The other, clad in an orange and black vest-like garment that had fur on the collar and failed to cover anything besides his upper chest and back, black pants loose around the thighs and tight around the calves, with gloves of mismatched length and two black horns jutting down and out on either side of his face, had freckled skin and black hair that couldn't quite cover his pointed ears.

Marco didn't have to see the two red, spade-tipped tails to know what he had summoned. He regarded the two demons with an equanimity the situation didn't deserve while he considered his available options. The wards would hold the demons indefinitely, and, because he was their summoner, the implicit contract between them meant they could do him no harm. If he was not careful, however, they could wreak havoc around him.

"Well now," the demon on Marco's right said, his lips splitting into a bone-chilling grin that exposed his fangs, "looks like a mortal mage has been knocking on all the wrong doors."

"State your names," Marco ordered as two pairs of burning red eyes met his own. These were the first demons he had faced, but he had given up on fear a long time ago. His current circumstances did not permit hesitation.

"Ace," the black-haired demon said as he slowly rose from his haunches, tail flicking.

"Sabo," the blond-haired demon stated. He stood from his previous kneeling position and examined Marco with far more restraint than his companion.

Ace and Sabo. Marco's grip on his staff tightened when the names finally clicked in his memory. According to the lore stored in the library, the two were demon princes, brothers, and placed among the most powerful of those who dwelled in the Lower Realms. He should not have been able to summon them, and yet, here they were.

"I am curious," Sabo admitted, studying Marco with an almost bemused expression, "how a mortal managed to get his hands on our true names."

"Summoning not one, but two demon princes," Ace continued. "Just what are you trying to do, mage? The last man who summoned us—"

"Ended up dead, I know," Marco said. He used his free hand to massage his forehead, where a post-spell headache was doing its utmost to pound his brain into pieces. While the two demons watched, Marco began to draft up an explicit contract, drawing upon the lingering energy in the air to forge the document. Spirals of light drifted through the air to weave the paper. Powerful though the demons may be, a contract was a contract. Marco would not dwell on the circumstances that made this outcome happen; what was done was done.

"You aren't serious," Ace said, his pretense of amusement dropping. "A human? Make a contract? With _us_?"

Marco didn't spare the focus to respond. This ritual had drained him even more than he had prepared for; he could not do it again for the rest of this lunar cycle, if not longer. He had known there would be no second chances and, for whatever reason, the spell had granted him allies of the infernal nature rather than the angelic. The situation was desperate; he did not have the time to wait, gather his strength, and try again.

He finished the contract. "Sign in blood and swear on your true names you will follow this contract," he ordered.

Ace and Sabo exchanged a look. Marco could see them debating whether or not to fight. Were he a lesser magician, Marco knew, he would be at a much greater risk of being devoured.

He kept his expression wiped clean of the desperation churning in his core, but his grip on his staff tightened without him noticing.

_Please._

Sabo was the one to pluck the contract out of the air and scrutinize it. "You're quite thorough," he commented. He handed the contract to Ace, who looked it over just as thoroughly. Several seconds into his examination, Ace suddenly stiffened, and the air grew thick with malice. Marco tensed, but Sabo suddenly grabbed his brother and hissed something in his ear. Ace glanced up at Marco, eyes narrowed, and then slowly nodded.

"You know," Ace said, "I'm not the biggest fan of being shackled by a contract. This is my first time in the mortal realm in centuries."

"Things have changed since the Great War," Marco said flatly. "You can either agree to be bound by this contract or be banished back to the Lower Realms."

Ace's eyebrows shot up. "You're rather confident."

Marco didn't reply. He watched as Sabo elbowed Ace. The two demons held a quick, quiet discussion punctuated by several gestures and Ace shooting Marco a particularly nasty glare.

But, after a minute, Ace relented. Sabo signed the first copy and then, when Marco created a second copy for Ace, Ace signed as well. The air seemed to tremble for a moment as the magical bonds settled into place, but the feeling passed. The pressure on Marco's chest eased and the magician dematerialized the contracts with a wave of his hand.

"So," Sabo said, "why is a mage of the Phoenix Clan summoning demons?"

Marco was prepared for the question. He was not about to admit to these demons that their summoning had been a mistake. "A knight of this realm has turned traitor, attempted to murder a fellow knight, and stolen an artifact of incredible power. He must be stopped."

Ace cocked his head, expression twisting in distaste. "Blegh. I signed a contract with this guy for _that_?"

Sabo placed a hand on the other demon's shoulder and regarded Marco more carefully than before. Around them, the glowing crystals were losing more and more of their light and slowly sinking to the floor.

"That's quite the clinical answer," Sabo said. "You knew this knight, the one turned traitor, and the one he nearly killed, didn't you?"

No point in lying. "Yes. The members of this castle—members of the Court, the Knights Mobius, the Mage's Guild—are family. To have one of us turn traitor is an insult that cannot go unanswered."

"Hm." Ace put his hands on his hips and leaned forward. "That's still not the whole truth. Too practiced. Don't think you can fool us with calm expressions and careful words. You're angry—I can smell it."

Marco did not give the demon the satisfaction of rising to the bait. "Whatever my personal feelings on the matter may be, they are none of your concern." Ace's eyes narrowed. "I need you two to assist me in tracking down and defeating this traitor. You will act as my bodyguards and never cause physical harm to any human unless I order it. Is this understood?"

Ace glanced at Sabo with derision in his eyes, but after seeing Sabo give a minute shake of his head, Ace turned back to Marco.

"It is understood," Ace and Sabo said simultaneously, though Ace's tone held far more sarcasm than Sabo's.

Marco nodded and waved his hand. The shutters opened, flooding the room with light in the same instant that the crystals dropped to the floor, their energy spent. Marco then deactivated the wards in the room that would interfere with Ace and Sabo's demonic abilities; now that they were tied to his will, he didn't have to worry about that. Ace and Sabo watched him work silently, their expressions unreadable. Marco finally stepped out of his protective circle and planted his staff in front of him.

"I will take you to the knight the traitor attempted to kill. He is still recovering from his wounds. Furthermore, I cannot have anyone in this kingdom knowing that I have summoned two demons to aide us, nor that I intent to catch this traitor. The consequences of such news spreading would be catastrophic."

"Because you'd lose your position?" Ace asked dryly.

"No," Marco said shortly. "Because it would make it infinitely harder to track down Teach."

"Teach. The traitor?" Sabo guessed.

"Yes. Disguise yourselves and there should be no issue. Do not let any human know your true natures."

The two brothers exchanged a glance. Ace shrugged and wound his tail around his waist. The air around him shimmered. When the strange interference faded, Ace looked human: his horns had vanished, as had his tail, and his ears had lost their points. His eyes, too, had lost their red glow, and now appeared a human brown. He grinned, and while his canines were still elongated, Marco would not label them as fangs.

"Better?" Ace asked. Marco nodded.

Sabo cast his own glamour with the same results, though his eyes were a disconcertingly light blue.

"Even the best glamour cannot completely hide demonic energies as powerful as ours," Sabo said with a shrug. "This is the best we can do."

Marco nodded. "It will suffice. If anyone asks, you are mercenaries from the Northern Tundra who travelled here to aide me at my request." The two demons absorbed the story with slight nods. "Follow me."

Marco led the way out of his chamber and down the winding staircases. The demons' presences prickled at his senses, but Marco knew he would eventually adjust. While the demons' outfits certainly gained their little group a few second glances, the fact that Whitebeard's kingdom was a haven for groups from all over the world meant that strange fashions were hardly unusual.

"Kureha," Marco called, knocking on the sturdy wooden door. Kureha's quarters were in a large building next to Marco's tower, and the two had developed a working friendship over their love of the magical, scientific, and dangerous elements of the world.

"Yeah, I'm coming."

Kureha opened the door and scrutinized Marco and his two companions.

"They're—" Marco started, but Kureha didn't let him finish.

"Demons. I can see that." Marco was speechless, but Kureha ushered him inside. "Come now, Marco, I've been alive longer than you. You think I wouldn't recognize two demons when they're standing at my doorstep? Please. Now, you want to see Thatch?"

"Please."

"Hm." Kureha cast a considering gaze over Sabo and Ace. "You're going over Teach, aren't you?"

"As if I have a choice."

Kureha snorted. "Everyone always has a choice, mage." She led the way to the back of her chambers, where another door opened up into a room lined with rows of cots. Several of the cots were occupied, but one in particular stood out. Marco strode over to it immediately, one hand coming to rest on Thatch's shoulder. The knight was asleep, and he looked leagues better than he had a mere day ago, but the sight of his friend so hurt still made the guilt in Marco's heart weigh even heavier.

If he'd just noticed—

"I know what you're thinking," Thatch wheezed, his eyes opening, "'Wow, Thatch, you look so much better!' Seriously, Marco. That furrow in your brow is getting so deep it's a wonder it hasn't reached your brain."

"Thatch," Marco said, not even caring about the insult. "You're awake."

"Barely," Thatch grunted, trying to pull himself into a sitting position. Kureha was there in an instant, whacking him with a towel on her way to another patient.

"No sitting up yet," she ordered, and Thatch sank back down with a groan.

"I swear she's psychic," he complained. "I've tried to sneak out of here twice and she catches me every time."

"Thatch," Marco warned. Thatch waved a hand.

"Yeah, yeah, bedrest and all that." His gaze went past Marco and landed on Sabo and Ace. "Who're these two?"

"Ace," Ace greeted with a short bow.

"Sabo," Sabo said, doing the same. "We're mercenaries from the Northern Tundra. Marco contacted us and asked for help."

"A fire message," Marco explained quickly.

"You made it here from there in three days?" Thatch asked, ticking up an eyebrow.

"We travel quickly," Sabo lied.

"We're experts," Ace added. "Here to help."

Thatch didn't look convinced, but Marco silently urged him to trust the situation and, after a second, Thatch sighed. "Fine, I won't ask. What do you want to know?"

"I haven't told them anything," Marco clarified. Thatch nodded.

"When, where, and how were you attacked?" Sabo asked. Thatch closed his eyes, as though reciting information he'd learned by rote memorization.

"Three days ago, just before high noon; I was guarding the artifact with three of my brothers. Two went to investigate a noise, and in the meantime Teach approached. Haruta—the other guard—stopped him. We aren't allowed to approach the artifact without permission. Teach picked him up and threw him down the hall with the strength of an ogre. I tried to stop him; he got behind me, took his dagger, and stabbed me in the back. Half an inch deeper and he would have pierced my heart." Thatch opened his eyes. "Any questions?"

"Did you remain conscious long enough to see where he went?" Sabo asked. Ace had left Thatch's bedside in the middle of Thatch's explanation and was now wandering around the room, scanning the faces of the injured men and women. Marco watched him, but Ace didn't seem to have any ill intent. Kureha was watching him as well.

"He escaped the castle almost unseen," Thatch said with a frown. "I only saw him leave the chamber and head to the stairs. I heard after the fact that someone saw him leaving on the road to Farrow. The king has already sent soldiers there, but they haven't found anything." Thatch shot Kureha a dark look. "Unless the doctor is hiding something from me."

"You're in bed and injured!" Kureha called back, making Thatch flinch in surprise. "Don't get any funny ideas!"

Marco glanced back at Thatch, whose pained response to his flinch hadn't faded. One hand hovered over his chest.

"Ace, Sabo, wait outside," Marco ordered. The two demons stepped out, leaving Marco and Thatch relatively alone in the large room.

"So serious," Thatch said, but his rapidly paling face and bloodshot eyes ruined the humor.

"Thatch, I'm going to find him," Marco promised. Thatch stared at him, his expression melting into something too grave to belong.

"You'd better," he said with surprising strength.

The two clasped hands. Marco squeezed harder than usual. "Don't do anything reckless until I get back."

Thatch managed a pained smile. "Let me guess: you don't want anyone to know you're gone."

"Not yet."

Thatch shook his head. "You can grow up and dress fancy all you want, but you're still that reckless punk from Anilin's orphanage. You never change. Good luck."

Marco squeezed one last time and then left. Ace and Sabo were waiting just outside, as ordered. Marco ordered them to follow with a gesture back to his quarters, where he began to pack. Ace found a perch on the wooden beams that spanned the space just below the ceiling while Sabo leaned against the closed door.

"You already knew this information," Sabo said without preamble. "Why have that knight retell it?"

"So you could get the firsthand account," Marco said shortly.

"Sure, but you could've been at Fallow by now," Ace said. "It's gotta be close, if the king's soldiers have already looked there."

Marco paused in the midst of tucking a few crystals into his satchel. "I am not powerful enough to face Teach alone now that he has the artifact."

Ace frowned from where he crouched several yards off the floor. "What exactly _is_ this artifact? All you've said is that it's extremely powerful. You haven't even told us what it or Teach look like."

Marco resumed packing. He was reticent to tell the demons anything about the artifact; it had been handed down through generations of the Phoenix Clan, and it was only in the past decade that it had been entrusted to the king. It was not something he wanted the demons to know about.

"The artifact will be with Teach," Marco finally said. "It's small. He will carry it with him. As for Teach himself, he is the descendent of an ogre, and retains that stature. He stands over eleven feet in height, has brown skin, missing teeth, and curly black hair. If you suspect that an individual is Teach, alert me. I will be able to tell for sure."

"Sure," Ace muttered. In the privacy of Marco's quarters, both he and Sabo had undone their glamour spells. Ace wrapped his tail around the beam, swung down, and then, with his tail holding him up, stood almost completely upside-down with his feet on the bottom of the beam. "By the way, you forgot to pack money."

Marco cursed. The demon was right.

"So you blame yourself for Thatch's near-death," Sabo said bluntly. "I mean, you can't really hide something like that from us, you know. So you bide your time, build your strength, and summon…demons? I thought you mortals were kissing the feet of the angels these days."

Marco pressed his lips into a thin line while he placed his packed satchel over his shoulder and belted the second strap around his waist so it wouldn't swing when he walked. "I needed the unconventional."

"Ugh." Ace unwrapped his tail and, with almost feline grace, fell to the floor, rolled, and came up on his feet a foot from Marco's face. "Your lies are almost painfully obvious. You didn't intend to summon us."

"I—"

"Oh, I'm not hurt," Ace said, scrutinizing Marco with his unsettling red gaze. "Just offended."

"Ace," Sabo said. "Leave the poor mage alone." Ace snorted, gave Marco one last derisive look, and backed off.

Marco swallowed a sigh. This was going to be a long, long journey.


	2. The Wakening

 

“So, human civilization,” Ace said, walking backwards ahead of Marco on the road. The old stones were worn from hundreds of years’ worth of wheels and footsteps, but Ace moved as though tripping never even crossed his mind. “What’s changed?”

“We don’t want to make some gaff on accident,” Sabo said.

“Well, first of all, ‘gaff’ doesn’t mean ‘mistake’ anymore,” Marco said. Sabo’s eyebrows went up. Marco racked his brain for anything else. “For the most part, observation should get you through. Fortunately, the common tongue has not changed a great deal in the past few hundred years. Ogres, trolls, and goblins are allowed within human civilization, but are generally not trusted. If you need something to talk about with someone, complain about the quarterly taxes.”

The demons nodded sagely. Marco resigned himself to several stints of awkward conversation before they acclimated.

Ace suddenly shifted so he was walking in front of Sabo and assumed a rather ridiculous posture. “My good sir, I say, what fine weather we have today!”

Marco bit down on a sigh when Sabo perked up.

“I can agree, I do so enjoy travelling this way,” Sabo replied.

“The roads are cleared, the stonework fair,” Ace sang. “Oh, how good it is to breathe fresh air!”

The two infernal brothers grinned at each other. Marco kept walking.

“I’m so glad you two have discovered the other eternal topic of conversation,” he drawled. The twin looks of amusement he received were painfully similar to the one he would get from Thatch when catching the man in the middle of one of his many harmless pranks, and Marco’s patience ran out. Ace’s grin was especially familiar and it wrenched something in Marco’s chest to see it. “How about we walk in silence,” he said, and it wasn’t a question but an order. Ace’s mirth died and he scowled, but Marco’s implied command prevented any sounds from escaping his mouth.

For the next two hours they walked in silence. Ace and Sabo watched everything as though missing a single swaying branch would cause the end of the world. Marco left them to it; as long as they were distracted, he could easily think about what it was he had to do.

Fallow was a town well known for its library, which contained more books in a single location than any other place on the continent. Marco had no doubt that Teach was searching for ways to awaken the artifact, which had been dormant for centuries. If any place was to have that information, Fallow’s library was it. Teach had already scoured the Mage Guild’s library of texts; an hour or so of digging had uncovered that easily. But the Guild’s repertoire was sadly lacking, and the artifact was so old that any texts detailing its creation had likely been lost to time.

But, he had two demons walking next to him who had been alive for centuries even before the Great War. Marco opened his mouth to ask, only to see that Ace and Sabo were staring at the tree line about ten yards from the road.

“What is it?” Marco asked, implicitly waiving the silence command.

“Bandits,” Ace replied.

“Roughly ten to fifteen of them,” Sabo added. “An ambush party.”

“So close to the castle,” Marco muttered, observing the trees as subtly as he could. He could just barely make out flickers of movement as restless men shifted among the leaves. He had heard that there was a particular band getting rather bold, but an attack this close to the castle was unprecedented.

Ace smiled, and the glamour hiding the claws on his fingers flickered. “I say we turn the tables on them.”

“No,” Marco snapped. “Under no circumstances are you to reveal you are not human.”

Ace managed a perfectly flat look. “No, really? I’m glad you said that order, or I would have forgotten the clause _in the_ _fucking contract_ that commanded it.”

Marco, who had pulled his staff out from the straps on his back that held it in place for longer journeys, glared. “Forgive me for thinking that your bloodlust could cloud your judgement.”

“Listen, _mortal_ ,” Ace hissed, eyes flashing, “I’ve been alive longer than your petty little kingdom has _existed_. Do not think to lecture me on clouded judgement when I am able to plan on a scale you cannot even compreh—ow!”

Sabo lowered his hand from where he’d flicked Ace on the forehead. “Calm down, Ace. He has never met a demon before. He does not know the ways we think.”

Offended, Marco opened his mouth to refute that, only to pause. Sabo wasn’t wrong.

“Now,” Sabo continued, adjusting his gloves, “Ace and I are both perfectly capable of incapacitating these mortals without revealing ourselves to be anything more than we seem. Do we have your permission to harm them as much as necessary to ensure our safe passage?”

All this time, the trio had been standing in the road. Apparently tired of waiting, the bandits were emerging from the trees, crude weapons held aloft. Marco debated his odds; he wanted to conserve his magic as much as possible, and while he could handle this group on his own, he did not want to announce that Court Magician Marco was out of the castle. The less Teach knew, the better.

He sighed. “Yes, you have my permission.”

Ace pulled a dagger out of thin air. Marco blinked; one second Ace’s hand was empty, and in the next he held ornately-handled weapon that flashed in the light. Sabo wielded no weapons, but his body glowed with magical aura. The bandits charged with a roar and Ace and Sabo met them halfway. Marco stayed back; while he wanted to conserve his strength and maintain the secrecy of this mission, he also wanted to see the demons fight.

And Hells, did they fight.

Ace moved like an acrobat in one of the troupes that performed monthly at the castle, only faster. He ducked a swipe from the first bandit to reach him and opened up the bandit’s stomach while simultaneously kicking him into two of his friends. He then jumped over a sword swing, kicked off that bandit’s shoulders, and did a flip before landing on another’s shoulders. Ace’s weight proved too much for the bandit and he fell, but Ace was already moving on, never staying still and moving so quickly that Marco’s eyes ached from trying to follow him.

All this while he was hiding his true demonic strength. Marco made the mental note to break their connection as soon as this task was done; the world did not need these monsters in it.

Sabo lacked Ace’s fire, but his attacks were cold and ruthless. Spells launched from his fingers with pinpoint accuracy: paralysis, electricity, sleep, dizziness, confusion, binding—all low-level, but cast with such efficiency that no bandit got within ten feet of him. Sabo’s expression remained impassive even as he unleashed a quantity of magic that would have exhausted half the mages in the Guild. Even Marco doubted he would be able to do so much so quickly with so little apparent effort.

All seventeen bandits were dealt with in short order. Marco watched the last one fall, the man’s eyes still wide with shock. He hadn’t even seen Ace before the demon had buried his dagger in his neck, severing the spine. Ace yanked the dagger out and, after glancing around the ensure that no one else remained, he tossed it into the air. The weapon turned to flame and vanished. Sabo adjusted the short cape attached to his coat and faced Marco right when Ace drew level with him.

“We left some alive, in case your kingdom wishes to question them,” Sabo said.

Still awed by the display, Marco merely nodded. He drew his notebook and pencil from his satchel, wrote a quick message, and burned it with a spell that would sent the message to Izo, the captain of the patrol branch of the Knights Mobius. He made sure to include a note of secrecy within the message so that Izo wouldn’t reveal the source of the tip.

“They’ll pick them up within the hour,” Marco said. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Don’t want to stay to make sure none get away?” Ace asked curiously.

Marco gave the groaning bandits a cursory glance. “Have you left them in any position to run?”

“Point.”

They kept walking. They walked for most of the day, only breaking for meals. Marco felt his legs beginning to ache—it had been a long time since he’d been able to leave his studies in the castle to adventure like he had in his youth, and that showed. Ace and Sabo, of course, appeared to be exactly as they had been hours before. When the sun set and the road became too difficult to navigate in the dark, Marco found a clearing a little ways into the trees and settled against a tree to sleep, a minor protection spell keeping him insulated from bugs and the elements. He ordered Ace and Sabo to keep watch and then closed his eyes.

Sleep eluded him. Perhaps because his mind refused rest with Teach still at large, perhaps because he had two demons watching over him. The sounds of the night didn’t completely cover their hushed conversation; Marco listened almost without meaning to.

“It smells different,” Ace said.

“I don’t think it does,” Sabo replied. “The Great War tainted the air with too much magic. We smelled the burning towns and the destructive spells. The world itself, I believe, is the same.”

Ace snorted. “So you admit it smells different.”

Sabo sighed. “Fine, Ace, it smells different. _Slightly_.”

They were quiet for a minute. Marco had almost fallen asleep when Ace spoke again.

“Do you think they buried him?”

Someone shifted. “Ace.”

“No, I know, but—they had to, right? It’s what humans do. They bury their dead.”

“Ace.”

“Stop giving me that look, Sabo. I’m not—he’s not—”

“He’s dead, Ace,” Sabo said softly. “He’s dead, and whether he was buried or not will not change that.”

Marco nearly cracked his eyes open to see what the demons were doing but stopped himself. He wanted to hear more; who was dead? Why did Ace care so much? What mortal being could be so important to a demon? Demons only used mortals as anchors, nothing more.

“He’s dead, and we’re helping his killer,” Ace said, and Marco stiffened without meaning to. The conversation died for several minutes. When it continued, the demons spoke in the infernal tongue, which even Marco—for all his studying—couldn’t understand.

He fell asleep to the rumble of an approaching storm.

 

*          *          *

 

When Marco awoke, the world was wet. Water dripped from every surface; the storm of the previous night had dwindled to a miserable drizzle that hung in the air like a fog. Marco’s shield had fizzled out hours ago, but Marco was surprised to note that he was still dry. Standing, he examined himself and realized that someone else had put a shield over him.

“Figured you’d want to stay dry,” Sabo called from where he was perched in a tree, his clothes as impeccably untouched by the elements as always. He shifted slightly and dropped down from the tree, landing with a splash. “Ace is…keeping watch from farther away. He can join us when we reach the road.”

Marco nodded and spent a minute collecting himself before he and Sabo left the clearing. Marco snacked on bread, nuts, and berries that he had left over from the previous day. Sabo watched him eat.

“Do you eat?” Marco asked after several minutes. Sabo smiled and looked away.

“No, I don’t—well, I don’t have to. I can. Apologies; I was remembering someone.”

Marco felt a flicker of curiosity, but movement to his right stifled it. Ace dropped down from the trees. His hair was dripping wet, and he had a thunderous scowl on his face. Sabo, still perfectly dry, looked innocently ahead.

Ace growled something in the infernal tongue but Sabo didn’t break stride. The two demons flanked Marco, apparently unwilling to walk side-by-side. Marco got the distinct feeling that whatever part of the conversation he had missed last night was significant.

Every few steps, Ace ran a hand through his hair and shook his head a bit, spraying Marco with water. After ten minutes, Marco recast his elemental shield.

Their general misery continued for the four and a half hours it took them to reach Farrow. In that time, Sabo struck up a conversation with Marco about the politics of Whitebeard’s kingdom. Marco obliged as much as he was able; as Court Magician, he kept close tabs on the Court and other dealings that passed through the castle. Ace pitched in every now and then, usually with disparaging comments. Marco put up with him with all the patience and humor he’d picked up from years as Thatch’s friend. By the time Farrow was in sight, Ace’s mood had improved, but he still didn’t look pleased about his nature-induced shower.

“Halt!” called the guard at the gate. “Who goes there?”

Marco already had his story prepared. “Scribe Vale, with my two hired guards. The head librarian is expecting me.”

“Wait right there.” The armored guard signaled his fellows in the nearby tent, who checked a list of expected arrivals. They waved.

“Aren’t you smart?” Ace asked under his breath. Marco shot him a look right as the guard let them through.

“Thank you,” Marco said to the guard, who nodded and returned to his post.

Farrow was a town-turned-city that didn’t quite know what it wanted; narrow, winding streets opened up into wide thoroughfares that became twisting alleys in turn. The only landmark providing any reference at all was the library, which towered over every other building from the center of the city. Marco led the way with confidence; he had been to Farrow many times, and the route to the library was a familiar one. Ace and Sabo followed a step behind, each demon examining his surroundings with the same intensity as before.

The pair garnered more than a few curious looks, not just for their dress. While most mortals weren’t attuned to the magical spectrum, most could sense—at least subconsciously—the auras of magical beings. Fortunately, Ace and Sabo’s admittedly good looks worked as an excuse for any second glances.

“What, exactly, are we looking for at this library?” Sabo asked.

“Information,” Marco replied blithely. “Just stay quiet and let me lead.”

The head librarian was a bookish old woman whose name Marco never quite caught.

“I set out all the manuscripts, scrolls, and other documents in a back room,” she said, leading Marco through the towering stacks of books. Staircases spiraled up among lantern-lit platforms, the magic within those lights pulsing a gentle yellow. The Fallow library was an architectural marvel, and many of its visitors didn’t come just for the books. Marco caught sight of a few gapers among the scribes. Even Sabo and Ace were craning their necks, looking around with undisguised amazement. Holding fast to Marco’s order, though, neither made a sound.

“Right here,” the head librarian said, gesturing to a room neatly obscured among three bookcases. Marco only saw the door when he was right in front of it. “All the texts that man asked for are there, alongside any others I thought were important. If you need anything, I will be at the front desk.”

“Thank you, as always,” Marco began, turning to face her, but the woman was already gone. He blinked, shook his head, and went into the room. He took one pile of scrolls while Ace and Sabo divvied up the rest.

“Again, information would be useful,” Sabo said. The order must have worn off without a set time limit. Marco pocketed that information and sighed.

“The artifact Teach stole is powerful. Immensely so. But it needs to be awoken before it can be properly used. I have no doubt that Teach came here to consult old texts the Mage Guild’s libraries don’t hold.”

“So we’re looking for high concentrations of magic, or ritual sites,” Ace said flatly. “There are thousands of them within a hundred miles of here, never mind the rest of this country. We passed a man in town who claimed his _well_ was magic and would grant wishes for a coin.”

“Not pittance sites,” Marco clarified, ignoring the derision in Ace’s tone. “These will need to be powerful. Old battle sites from the Great War. Concentrations of Ley Lines. Things of that nature.”

Ace and Sabo exchanged a look, then Ace stood. “I’m going to look around. The architecture here is too impressive to pass up an examination.”

“No, you’re not,” Marco said. Ace scowled.

“Sabo can read fast enough for the both of us.”

“Ace,” Sabo said, “I don’t think that’s what he has an issue with.”

Ace glowered and then drew a finger across his palm, his claw momentarily flickering into view—just long enough to create a line of blood across the skin. Ace clenched his hand into a fist. “How about this? I solemnly swear on my demonic blood that, on this day, I will cause no harm to any individual or thing in this library.”

Marco thinned his lips, not liking the idea of Ace just wandering around. But swearing on blood was no small matter, especially for demons. “Fine. Be back within two hours.”

Ace mock-saluted and left, but not before Marco got a glimpse of his hand. The line on his palm had already healed. Shaking his head, Marco turned his attention to the closest scroll. Behind it, a stack of another seven stood waiting.

No helping it. Marco braced himself and set to reading.

 

*          *          *

 

“I’ve got another one,” Sabo said, glancing up from within his veritable mountain of texts. He shoved aside a tower of books that teetered ominously before stabilizing so that he could hold up a yellowed roll of parchment. His eyes were like marble, and he didn’t sound nearly as pleased as he had when he had uncovered the last potential site. “It describes the site of a battle during the Great War. Old magic lingers there.”

Marco nodded. “Add it to the pile.”

The “pile” was, in reality, only two other texts. Marco had discovered one, and Sabo had found the other. Sabo added the scroll and then sat back.

“It’s the last of mine.”

After a beat, Marco glanced down at his own space and realized he had reached the end of his book. “Mine as well. This has nothing but faerie stories; no concrete locations. Not even hints.” He shut the book and set it aside, rubbing his forehead. Then he examined the scrolls they had deemed worth looking into. “Three possible locations. One church that was burned during the Purges and holds the remnant souls that were trapped within; one ancient ring of Waystones that have sat next to the road to Alawane for longer than written record; and one battlefield.”

“It’s not a battlefield,” Sabo said. He stood and began to clean up the mess they’d made. “It’s an old castle. A keep, really. I doubt it still stands.”

“You doubt?”

Sabo hesitated. Marco sensed that, if his tail had not been glamoured, it would have been lashing back and forth. “If what the text describes is true, even the sturdiest of walls would have been hard-pressed to stay standing.”

“I see.”

Ace stirred in his sleep. He had come back after little more than an hour and gone to nap in the corner without a word. Marco hadn’t wanted to put in the effort to make him help, and he and Sabo had been making good progress regardless. Now, though, with their reading finished, it was time to wake him up.

“Ace,” Sabo said, taking initiative. “Ace.” The demon groaned and levered himself up on one forearm.

“Sabo?”

“Wake up. We’re done here.”

Ace blinked a few times and then got up. He stretched, and Marco heard the distinct sounds of joints popping. “What did you find?” Only, his yawn got in the way, and Marco heard something closer to, “Whaddayafine?”

“Three locations,” Marco cut in, and Ace snapped to wakefulness at the sound of his voice. “A church, a monument, and a keep.”

Ace glanced at Sabo and his expression lost the last lingering traces of sleep. “Sounds exciting.”

“Perhaps.” Marco stretched and then let his arms drop back to his sides. He stood there a moment, thinking. His brain felt strained from all that reading, and he knew he needed a break. He spoke while he collected his things. “Discussion can wait until we find a place for dinner. I’m quite done with this library for now.”

“For now?” Ace muttered, but he and Sabo obligingly followed Marco out.

They ended up eating at the tavern next door to the inn, a battered old place called the Hollow Bottle. Whatever picture had been above the door had long ago been worn away by the elements, but the inside was teeming with life. Two serving girls expertly worked their ways among the tables, distributing drinks and acquiring coins with cold efficiency.

Marco found a spot in the back, slightly away from the worst of the noise. Ace and Sabo sat on either side of him and then both jumped when a third server—this one a young boy—suddenly appeared behind them. While the demons hid their reactions, Marco ordered a round of beer and, once the boy had relayed the available options for dinner, two stews and a leg of lamb with potato. He tossed the coins to the waiting hand and turned back to his companions.

“I want you two to blend in,” he explained to the two confused demons.

The beer came quickly; the food did not. All the while, whispered conversation threaded around boisterous arguments that never actually broke out into brawls. Marco tried to listen, but the varying volumes and constant movement made it nearly impossible.

Fortunately, he had magic. A subtle spell enhanced his hearing and allowed him to focus on specific conversations. He only realized after the fact that Sabo had copied him, both for himself and for Ace.

Nursing his beer, Marco listened.

The closest table was talking about the roads. And how the weather was affecting those roads. Marco immediately moved on. The next three tables were all having conversations central to their own lives; jobs, family, the like. But the fifth table—the fifth table was set in the far corner and occupied by a trio of scribes. Marco recognized one as the man who had been organizing a shelf in the restricted section that they had passed on their way to the back room.

“I’m telling you, we have two texts about it. _Two_.” Scribe One, when he finished, took an irritated swig from his mug. “Greatest library my ass.”

“Calm down,” said Scribe Two, who had her back to Marco. “It was a long time ago.”

“Only a few hundred years. We have texts going back _thousands_ that cover things more mundane than the death of the Mercenary King.”

Across from Marco, Ace stiffened.

“Sure, but it’s all about what survives,” Scribe Three pointed out. Scribe One grumbled something. “What?”

“I said, it’s ridiculous. That glorified bandit goes ’round, doin’ what he pleases while the world falls apart, and all we’ve got to prove anything is word-of-fuckin’- _mouth_. Ridiculous.”

Sabo watched his brother warily. Ace had gone still as stone.

Marco knew a few things about the Mercenary King: surviving during the Great War, the King had amassed quite the following before dying in a climactic battle against…something. Records surround his death were few and far between, and none seemed to be truly accurate. With the way Ace was reacting, though—it was almost as though he’d been there.

That brief moment of distraction cost Marco a few lines of dialogue, and he only snapped back to the present when Ace stood up so fast that he upset his chair, causing the heavy wooden thing to tip over and crash back onto the floor.

Marco froze at the fury simmering in Ace’s eyes, and he didn’t react quickly enough to stop Ace from marching over to the scribes’ table.

But Sabo did. Catching his brother by the elbow, Sabo yanked Ace aside and hissed something Marco didn’t catch. Ace snarled back, and the conversation grew more and more heated until Ace finally shoved Sabo back and stalked out the door. Marco began to stand, but Sabo hesitated only a moment before he returned to the table.

“It may be a bit presumptuous to you for a demon to advise his summoner, but I _highly_ suggest that you do not follow him,” Sabo said.

“He’s—”

“Angry, yes. Dangerous, no.” Sabo sat down and, after a moment, Marco followed suit. The blond demon stared at his mug of beer, brows knitted in thought. Then he looked up. “Ace has always been the more…hot-blooded of us two. He feels deeply, intimately.”

“And you?”

“Less so,” Sabo admitted. “At times, anyway. We cover each other’s weaknesses, augment each other’s strengths.” Marco thought about the fight against the bandits. The two had worked seamlessly together; Ace drew the attention to himself and Sabo made sure that attention didn’t get too dangerous. “In any case,” Sabo continued, shaking his head slightly, “it’s best to leave him alone for now. Give him some time to cool off, as you humans like to say.”

“I’m not comfortable with having an angry demon loose in this town.”

For just an instant, Sabo tensed; but the anger in his eyes was gone so quickly that Marco wasn’t even sure it had truly been there. “For now, trust me that he is no danger to anyone but himself,” Sabo said lowly as the serving boy arrived with food.

“I will seek him out after we eat,” Marco said, daring Sabo to challenge him again. Sabo gave him a long, tired look.

“For what purpose?” He paused to slide Ace’s portion closer to himself. “You’re our summoner. You have made it quite clear that you trust us only as far as you can control us.” That rage flashed again. Marco wondered if he was truly imagining it. “All you would be doing is ensuring that Ace has not broken his contract, which you should know without needing to see him.”

“That is true,” Marco acknowledged, and only admitting it out loud made him realize how childish it made him sound. Sabo and Ace had demonstrated no desire to wreak any kinds of infernal havoc. Hells, Sabo seemed more incline to talk Ace down than join him. Still—“But I want to make sure that nothing happens.”

Sabo snorted something and tucked into his food. He finished in just a few minutes, to Marco’s equal amazement and horror.

“I’m going for a walk,” Sabo announced. His challenging look was met with silence. Marco finally nodded, and Sabo left. Marco, alone at the table, looked down at the stained wood under his hands.

His left hand slowly curled into a fist, but he forced himself to stay still. Two demons, both of incredible power, wandering without supervision but bound by contract. It sounded like the premise of a bad joke.

His stew, when he remembered to eat it, was cold.

 

            *          *          *

 

Marco found Ace on the rooftop of the local blacksmith’s shop. The tiles were warm under his feet and the chimney released a near-constant stream of smoke. Rhythmic slams of metal on metal echoed into the night as the blacksmith worked on a late-night project.

Ace was sitting just below the roof’s peak, left leg drawn up and his left arm thrown carelessly over his knee while he absently rubbed the orange bandana tied to his belt between his right forefinger and thumb. His gaze was far away, fixed at a point past the clouds and the stars they tried to hide. He had dropped his glamour—there was no one around to see him—and his tail flicked in response to Marco’s approach.

Rendered humble by the pain held in Ace’s eyes, Marco sat a few feet away, careful not to slip on the tile. Ace didn’t react to his presence, and soon, even his tail settled again.

“His name was Luffy,” Ace said, breaking the silence so suddenly that Marco only realize he’d spoken when Ace shifted his gaze from the sky to the bandana at his waist. “Most people knew him as the Mercenary King, but that—that was postmortem. To me, he was always just Luffy. He was—he meant the world to me.” Ace glanced at Marco, a challenge in his eyes that Marco refused to acknowledge. He knew when to stay silent. Ace looked away again after a second, his mind pulled to the past.

“This was during the Great War. Luffy summoned Sabo and I on accident. He was a powerful mage, though he didn’t know it. He just needed help, and we helped him. Kept helping him, even though he never made a formal contract with us.”

Despite his intentions to remain neutral, Marco felt one of his eyebrows ticking up. Beneath them, the blacksmith had finished his project. The chimney’s smoke began to wane.

“See, that’s the thing. These days, everyone thinks we demons need to be leashed. Back then? Back then, the angels and us were two sides of the same coin. We warred, yes, but the Great War was the tipping point. That’s when our realms separated completely and the angels sealed us away and declared us infernal. It was a betrayal millennia in the making.” Ace shook his head. “But Luffy—Luffy was an island in the middle of all of that. He didn’t care about the war raging around him or the towns that got destroyed or any of it. He had a goal, and he saw it through.” Ace’s voice turned wistful. “Sabo and I never left his side.”

In the distance, a cart on its way out of the town rattled over the cobblestone streets. Ace waited until the night was quiet again before he continued. “Luffy had enemies. A lot of enemies. His quest for the amulet—” Ace stopped talking, his hands balling into fists. He only continued after his right hand had relaxed again.

“Luffy’s quest for the amulet ended in tragedy. Trust, hope, determination—none of it was enough. He sacrificed himself to save his friends. Sabo and I lingered as long as we could, but without Luffy anchoring us to the mortal realm, we couldn’t stay.” Ace shook his head. “The Great War found us, in the end, and it took everything.”

“What do you mean, it found you?” Marco asked when it became clear that Ace wouldn’t continue on his own. Ace sighed.

“There was a mage tasked with guarding the amulet who wielded power the likes of which this world has not seen since. Sabo and I could not defeat him. Luffy and his friends did all they could, but it wasn’t enough. We faced off to battle in the keep’s final chamber. The amulet was in sight—so close I could taste it—and Luffy. _Inflike_ , Luffy.” The infernal curse made Marco’s hair stand on end. “The loyal bastard sacrificed himself to save his friends and it didn’t even work. Sabo and I barely managed to hold the mage off long enough for Zoro and Nami to escape. I don’t know what became of them, but that mage—the angels put him there, blessed him. I doubt Luffy noticed, but the angels themselves had stood in the way of a mortal’s quest, a violation of one of their biggest tenants.”

Ace made eye contact with Marco and his red eyes smoldered with centuries-old rage. “That mage stole everything from me. _Everything_.”

The air crackled with hate. “Ace,” Marco cautioned, and the demon sneered.

“You carry his blood.”

Marco froze. “What?”

Ace’s tail lashed back and forth. Flames flickered along his skin. “You are his descendent, _Court Magician_ Marco, head of the Phoenix Clan. I knew it from the moment I looked at your little contract.” Ace summoned the document with a wave of his hand. It floated in the air, innocuous and powerful. “Your ancestor had a contract, too. With an angel. Your handwriting is practically identical.”

“Ace.” Now it was a warning. Marco could feel Ace straining against his invisible restraints even though the demon had barely moved.

“Because of that contract, no matter how many times Sabo and I killed that _inflike_ mage, he would not die. He rose, again and again, more and more powerful each time, until his mere presence burned us like holy fire. He killed Luffy for no other reason than because the angels ordered it. His _contract_ , Marco, doomed the world to another fifty years of war. That amulet could have ended it all. Luffy could have ended it all. But no.” Ace’s eyes were literally burning now, tongues of flame licking around his eyelashes, casting his face in harsh light. “No, the mage had a job, and a contract, and a selfish desire to join the ranks of the beings using him as a _tool_.”

On the last word, Ace’s right hand closed into a fist and the contract went up in flames, burning to ash in the span of a second. Marco felt the heat inside himself and gasped in shock and pain, only then realizing just how enraged Ace truly was.

“And now,” Ace continued while he got to his feet, “now, the descendent of that mage asks for my help. _My._ _Help_.” He took a step. “I thought I could bear it. After all, this plane is the birthplace of all demons. It was a return to my true home.” Another step. “But _you_. Stars above, you act as though you don’t even _know_. And your clan. I looked into it today, at the library. The records they keep are thorough, you know. That ancestor of yours ascended. Living up to the name of the Phoenix Clan. Rising from the ashes.” A third step, a broken laugh. “Those ashes were my friends. My family. My blood. And you _stole them from me!”_

Ace lunged forward and Marco scrambled back, hastily erecting a barrier between them. Ace broke through it like it was nothing and Marco saw his death reflected in Ace’s eyes. He stopped moving back, knowing there was no way out. His magic—without his staff, his artifacts—was no match for an enraged demon prince.

Ace’s claws went for Marco’s throat and the magician closed his eyes, sent a silent apology to his king, and waited.

And waited.

He opened his eyes. Ace was caught mid-lunge, eyes wide with shock. Behind him, Sabo stood with one gloved hand outstretched. A spell of sealed movement, cast instantaneously without an incantation. Marco swallowed. Sabo’s gaze left Ace and went to Marco.

“I take it my brother told you our history,” he said. Marco nodded and slowly adjusted into a sitting position a foot farther away from Ace’s claws. Ace’s eyes moved, tracking him, but the demon remained otherwise frozen. Sabo snapped his fingers and Ace’s eyes widened in the instant before his body contorted. Marco watched, transfixed, as Sabo manipulated Ace into a position on his knees, head bowed and hands restrained behind his back. Ace’s chest rose and fell with his breathing, but he did not move or speak. Sabo moved to stand next to his brother, his expression cold.

“Let me be clear,” he stated. “I share Ace’s anger. Luffy’s death is not one so easily forgotten, and we will never forgive it. But,” and here Sabo’s eyes narrowed, one hand coming to rest on Ace’s shoulder, “what I _do_ recognize is that you are not that mage. I thought Ace understood that when I discussed signing the contract with him, but I was evidently mistaken.”

Ace growled something in the infernal tongue and Sabo’s grip on his shoulder tightened.

“The sins of the father are not always the sins of the son,” Sabo said, giving Ace a pointed look that the other demon wasn’t in a position to see. “And from what I have observed, you do not share much of anything in common with your ancestor save your blood. Your intentions, your goals—I am reminded much more of Luffy than that man.”

Ace stiffened, his head whipping around to look Sabo in the eyes. Sabo knelt down and cupped Ace’s face in his hands. Only then did Marco get a glimpse of the restraining spells Ace was still bound by.

“You would see it too, brother,” Sabo murmured, “if you were not so blinded by rage.”

Ace’s eyes remained narrowed. Sabo shifted his grip and pressed his thumbs into Ace’s forehead. “ _Sleep_ ,” he commanded. Ace’s eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed against his brother.

Marco remained speechless while Sabo gathered Ace into his arms.

“I am still bound by our contract,” Sabo said calmly. “Like Ace, I do this by choice. I could destroy that document as easily as he did.” Marco struggled to maintain his neutral expression in the face of Sabo’s blunt admission. “You humans have forgotten what it means to be a summoner. The contracts were an invention of the angels. We are not so disloyal, so fickle, so feral as to need leashes.”

With that, Sabo turned and leaped away, landing several rooftops over, jumping again, and quickly disappearing into the night. Shell-shocked, numb, and beginning to shake, Marco got to his feet and made his unsteady way back to the inn.

He didn’t remember returning to his room. He didn’t remember undressing, getting into bed, or falling asleep. He didn’t remember his dreams, and only when the sun reached his eyes from the window did he return to consciousness.

Marco sat up with a groan. His room was empty, and he didn’t know what else he expected. The events of the previous night hummed a quiet, discordant melody in the back of his mind while he dressed. Sliding his staff through its straps, Marco paused.

What was he doing? The two demons were gone. He knew without needing to check that he would find no trace of their infernal presences in the town. He had let them go without even voicing a word of dissent. Ace had burned his contract, Sabo had stated that he could choose to do the same.

But—

Sabo’s contract was intact. Marco summoned it and stared at the words scrawled on the magic-imbued parchment. His eyes went from line to line until he got to Sabo’s signature written in blood at the bottom. Though the contract had been sealed days prior, the blood still appeared fresh.

Marco stared at the paper, Sabo’s words echoing in his ears.

_“We are not so feral, so disloyal, so fickle as to need leashes.”_

It went against all of his training as a magician. His entire clan’s history as he’d been taught. Even thinking about the idea made him consider the possibility that he had gone mad.

“If I am mad, then so be it,” Marco whispered, and destroyed the contract.

The simple act was more reckless than anything he had done before. The summoning ritual paled in comparison and, as the shredded contract faded from existence, Marco wondered if this would give the Mage’s Guild enough evidence to have him stripped of his position and banished to the Sunken Lands.

But, of course, position and prestige would mean nothing if Teach succeeded. Besides, Marco had cared little for power all his life. He had begun this quest, not for glory or honor, but to avenge a friend, and to prevent Teach’s rise to power. This had never been about glory or—magic forbid—ascension.

And he could understand Ace’s rage, even if it was terrifying. Ace wanted revenge he could never possibly get. Marco was the closest thing to his target; in a twisted way, it made sense. Marco had learned the true meaning of family under Whitebeard and Thatch’s near-death was showing him the lengths he would go to get revenge. He couldn’t imagine Thatch actually dying and having to spend centuries stewing on all the things he could’ve done to prevent it.

Marco sighed. Without their contracts, Ace and Sabo were not bound to Marco’s word. He was still their link to the mortal realm, but they were free to do as they pleased. All the magical texts taught that demons could not be trusted on their own, that they had to be tightly controlled lest they go wild. But after seeing Ace and Sabo, even if only for a couple of days, Marco suspected that the texts were wrong on some key level.

Time would tell just how wrong they were.

The inn served breakfast for a fair price, so Marco dropped a few coins and ate a breakfast of hearty stew and buttered bread, an uncomfortable echo of his meal the previous night. He was mopping up the last of the stew with the last of his bread when two people joined him at the table. Marco glanced up, suspicious, and nearly dropped his food.

Ace and Sabo, glamoured but easily recognizable. Marco, for lack of anything to say, settled for finishing his bread.

He washed his meal down with a drink of water and gave Sabo a questioning look, but the demon merely inclined his head towards Ace. Ignoring the trepidation winding its way around his stomach, Marco turned to Ace.

The black-haired demon had his head bowed and his hands clasped in front of him on the table. At Sabo’s silent prompting, he lifted his head and met Marco’s gaze. Marco saw flickering embers where Ace’s rage had burned the previous night, and the lines of Ace’s face held a pale shadow of their former hostility.

“I can’t forgive what your ancestor did,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “But you are not him. I should have seen that.” He bowed his head again. “I apologize for my actions. They were rash and, as I should have seen before, undeserved. Please, forgive me.”

Marco stared at Ace’s bowed head, unable to process the apology coming from the demon’s mouth.

Demons did not apologize. They did not come back after having their contracts burned. They did not admit mistakes or change their minds and, above all, they did not beg forgiveness.

But forgiveness was exactly what Ace was asking for and, while the terror Marco had felt last night would never fully leave him, he could not hold a grudge against the man sitting across from him.

So he sighed, and shifted in his chair, and finally said: “Lift your head, Ace.” The demon did, and they locked eyes. “I forgive you.”

Ace’s eyes went wide and he quickly glanced at Sabo as though to confirm that he hadn’t misheard. Sabo, a wry little smile on his face, nodded his confirmation. Ace ducked his head and then looked at Marco.

“You are one reckless mage, you know that?” he asked. “I nearly killed you. Would have, if Sabo hadn’t stopped me.”

Marco’s expression didn’t change. “I know.”

Ace stared. Blinked. Sighed. “You were right,” he muttered to Sabo. “He is kinda like Luffy.”

Sabo smiled. “Told you.”


	3. The Weary

Despite no longer being under contract, Ace and Sabo’s behavior did not change much at all. Ace seemed calmer, and both demons appeared to hold significantly more goodwill towards Marco than before, but other than that Marco could see no difference. They paused about a mile away from Farrow, well away from any prying eyes or suspicious ears, and planned. Marco found a spot on a fallen log; Ace sat against a tree that Sabo leaned on to his right.

“We have three options, but only two of them are in this direction,” Marco explained, rolling out a large, waterproofed map on the ground. Using the bottom of his staff to point—he could almost hear Hancock muttering about improper use of magical equipment—Marco indicated the three locations while he spoke. “The church, the Waystones, and—” he hesitated, and Ace finished.

“The keep.”

“Right.” Marco indicated the church. “This is well to the East, two weeks’ journey at least even if we travelled hard. The Waystones, however, are here—just west of here, about four days’ walk. And the keep is beyond that and slightly to the north; a week’s walk from here, but only three from the stones.”

Ace regarded the map with a hard gaze. “If your traitor is not going to the stones or the keep, we’ll have an extra two weeks of travel time. We’ll be way too late to stop him.”

“Better odds than betting everything on the church,” Sabo pointed out. “Besides, I’ve no doubt that the church—even with its Purged victims—lacks the quantity of ancient magic that Teach needs. The stones and keep are the only options within any reasonable distance.”

Ace still didn’t look convinced, but he accepted Sabo’s logic and looked to Marco. “Well, fearless summoner, this is your ship. Steer.”

Marco gave him a dry look and then rolled up his map, shrinking it with a simple spell and returning it to his satchel. “The road to Alawane picks up a few miles from here. It’s an almost straight shot to Alawane; we will find the Waystones about three quarters of the way there.”

“Let me clarify,” Sabo said, pushing off the tree, “since things have changed a bit since I was last here. The road from Farrow is not the road to Alawane?”

Marco shook his head. “No, as the road to Alawane is an ancient construction. The road from Farrow meets it at a fork; the roads to Alawane, Tristoff, and Arbor all branch from that location.”

“You mortals and your confusing names,” Sabo muttered with a shake of his head. “No wonder you spend so much time discussing the roads; no one knows which one you’re talking about.”

 

*          *          *

 

They stopped in the tiny village of Laifet, about a days’ walk from Farrow, so that Marco could replenish his supplies. He purchased food from the local inn and bargained for beds for the night. While he was perfectly capable of sleeping outside, if he had the opportunity to avoid such a fate, he would certainly take it.

Ace and Sabo, wary of all the angelic imagery pasted around the town, were visibly uneasy.

“They don’t know what they’re worshipping,” Ace complained during dinner. He kept his voice down, mindful of the suspicious glances of the locals. In such a small town, travelers were never entirely welcome. Marco considered it an unspoken wonder of the world, considering that the town was quite literally _on_ the road to Alawane. “I mean, angels? Really?”

After Marco’s near-death experience, Ace had been much more open. Marco wasn’t sure what to make of his behavior just yet, so he settled for bemused amusement. “Ace, you do realize that we have precious little scripture about angels, much less any that proclaims them the righteous bastards you describe?”

Ace, in the middle of snacking on a strip of dried beef, choked. Sabo not-so-helpfully hit his back until Ace had recovered enough to shove him away. “‘Righteous bastards’?” he repeated weakly.

Marco shrugged. “Your story forced me to do some reevaluation.” The road gave plenty of opportunity for introspection, and while it was nauseatingly world-inverting to think about, the true natures of angels and demons simply _were_ , whether or not Marco liked them.

Shaking his head, Ace leaned back against the wall with the beef hanging out of his mouth the way Thatch often chewed on pieces of grass. “Are you humans always this…malleable?”

“Considering that I am merely one individual, I can’t answer that,” Marco replied blithely.

“In any case,” Sabo said, “we should watch our words for the duration of our stay. I’d hate to get chased out of another town by a crowd armed with pitchforks and torches.”

“Another?” Marco asked, catching a glimpse of a grin twisting Ace’s lips. Sabo mirrored the expression.

“Let’s just say that Luffy was not always the most popular individual in town. Some people took…offense, so to speak, to his ideas.”

“Violence, more like,” Ace said.

“Let’s not repeat that,” Marco said. “The last thing I need is for a story like that with a physical description to reach the castle. Thatch would never let me hear the end of it.”

Ace cocked an eyebrow. “The wounded one?”

Hearing his friend described like that made Marco deflate slightly. “Yes. Though I received a message during dinner that he is recovering nicely.”

“So that’s why you suddenly stepped out,” Sabo said.

“Right. Kureha does not care much for timing—or appearances in a town that has likely seen a hanging within the past two hundred years.”

Sabo frowned. “Are you serious?”

“Very. There are still many towns suspicious of magic, especially after the Great War. A stopping-point like this is probably more suspicious than most, given with how many strangers it must deal with.”

“So if they found out you were Court Magician,” Ace began, but Marco stopped him.

“Let’s not finish that thought. I’d prefer if this was as uneventful a stay as possible.”

Ace shrugged. “Fair enough.” He pushed off from the wall and stood straight, cracking his back with a slight wince. “Sabo, watch?”

“Sure. Enjoy your rest, Court Magician Marco.”

Marco could have sworn that Sabo had a wry grin on his face when he spoke, but the demon left too quickly for him to be sure.

 

*          *          *

 

After passing through the forked roads and sticking to the road to Alawane, the group made quick time to the stones, shortening the four-day walk to three and a half. When they got within a half day’s walk of the stones, however, Marco stopped. As a farmer’s wagon—pulled by a weary-looking donkey and driven by a weary-looking man—rumbled past, Marco led the way off the road.

“What _is_ that?” Ace asked, wrinkling his nose as though smelling something unpleasant.

“Not sure,” Sabo replied, disgust finding equal purchase in his lowered brows. “It’s some kind of taint to the air.”

Marco kept walking, following the magical energy still lingering in the air. He had been feeling it for the past hour, but only now had he been able to track it. While the energy was not a smell, it prickled at Marco’s magical senses like an unpleasant odor. The farther he pushed his way through the trees, the stronger it became, until he had to resist the urge to put an arm over his face, a gesture that would accomplish precisely nothing.

Ace had tied his bandana over the lower half of his face and had his eyes squinted almost shut. The bandana’s fabric shimmered with an enchantment, and Marco quickly saw the logic behind the action. He paused for a minute to wind his half-width cape around his face and neck like a scarf. The material, already enchanted with spells for protection against wear and grime, gained another enchantment. Soon, Marco could breathe again. He glanced to his right and saw that Sabo had a single enchanted glove held over his mouth and nose.

The three soon found the source of the taint: a clearing some ten yards by twelve, littered with debris and broken trees. Marco crouched by the nearest shattered trunk, tracing the splinters while he tried to puzzle out just what could have caused such damage. It was undoubtedly magic, but what spell? The taint in the air only told him that strong black magic had been used, and nothing more specific than that.

“Marco,” Sabo called, his voice somewhat muffled by his glove. Ace and Marco picked their way through the debris to where Sabo stood in the center of the clearing. Sabo was kneeling over a deer carcass—or what Marco guessed was a deer carcass. The poor animal was scattered in gory pieces over several yards, with only its bones retaining some semblance of shape. Flies and other bugs buzzed through the air.

“Two days, at the most,” Ace muttered, his voice laden with disgust no longer directed solely at the tainted air. “What a senseless killing.”

“Who would do this?” Marco murmured, crouching next to Sabo to get a better look. From the scorch marks, he would hazard to guess that the cause was a combustion spell, but no combustion spell he knew of should leave such a taint in the air.

The trio examined the clearing for several more minutes, but no further clues presented themselves. Back on the road, Marco racked his brain for potential reasons.

“I’ve heard no tales of bandits near Alawane,” he mused. “Certainly no rogue magicians. No peasant magician, no matter how talented, would senselessly waste that meat.”

“They were likely practicing,” Sabo said.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Marco agreed. “I just can’t figure out what spell. None that I know of fit the taint; nor have the locals shown signs of panic or fear about mysterious explosions in the woods.”

Sabo shrugged, a surprisingly human gesture, and glanced at Ace. “What do you think?”

Ace’s eyes were far off, and Sabo had to physically prod him to get his attention. “What?”

“I asked what you thought about the clearing,” Sabo repeated.

“I don’t know,” Ace said slowly, brows knitting. “Something about it—I can’t explain. It felt familiar.”

“Familiar?” Sabo queried, but Ace just shook his head.

“I don’t know how or from where. Did you not recognize it?”

Sabo hesitated. “Well, maybe, now that you’ve brought up the possibility.”

“If we find another location, we can see if it jogs your memory,” Marco suggested.

“Let’s hope we don’t,” Ace growled.


	4. The Worn

The Waystones stood like ancient monuments on the horizon. With the sun beginning its descent from the sky, Marco felt the buoyancy of having his destination in sight speeding his steps. Sabo and Ace followed suit; they had shaken off the strange darkness of the clearing some time ago and now seemed just as eager as Marco to reach the massive monoliths.

They had to pause halfway to the stones; all three sensed another taint in the air.

“Another site?” Marco wondered. Ace and Sabo responded with grim expressions as they trekked into the tall grass that ringed the stones’ hill. This clearing was larger than the first, set farther from the road, and even worse on Marco’s sixth sense. Eyes watering, Marco examined the epicenter. A nest of snakes this time, barely recognizable, and the only proof were the scales shimmering in the dirt. Just like the first site, this one held no concrete information, but a single suspicion began to take root in Marco’s mind. He didn’t voice it—he didn’t have proof, but a third site on this route would give him some very strong circumstantial evidence.

Ace and Sabo regarded the location with wary eyes, and when they were back on the road, Ace spoke.

“I definitely recognize it,” Ace declared.

“I do as well,” Sabo said, his eyes shadowed. “But it’s…twisted.”

Ace grunted his agreement. They kept walking.

They reached the interlocking circles of twenty-foot stones within two hours. Marco paused to rest an hour out, just in case Teach was ready and waiting. But, when they got to the hill upon which the stones rested, Teach was nowhere to be found. Marco could not detect even a single sign that he had been there, much less attempted to activate an ancient relic with the stones’ humming energy.

While staying at the location was, for all intents and purposes, a waste of time, Marco lingered. He had visited the Waystones several times in his life, and each time their scale and power rendered him silent with awe. Theories had been spun and sung for centuries about the Waystones’ purpose and origins, but no one had any definite answer. The only information about them came from a carving deep into the central stone: a symbol made up of broken circles reminiscent of the organization of the stones themselves. It was a mystery that scholars had been exhausting themselves with since before the Great War. Marco strongly suspected that the rest of the stones had held carvings as well, but time had weathered each to a blank gray slab.

“It looks the same,” Ace mused, his voice cutting through Marco’s thoughts.

“Pardon?”

Ace glanced at Marco and blinked, as though he’d forgotten Marco was there. “When we passed through here with Luffy. Robin—one of his friends—was fascinated by them. Luffy made us stay here for as long as we could, just so Robin could examine them.”

“Did she discover anything?”

Ace reached out and ran a reverent hand down the surface of the closest stone. He seemed to shiver, but it could have been a trick of the light. “No, she didn’t. I doubt anyone will ever truly know.”

Marco frowned. Something about Ace’s words struck him as odd. “But you know?”

Ace snapped out of whatever trance he had been in and glanced between Marco and Sabo. “Well, yeah.” Then he smiled. “But I’m not going to tell you. It’s an eons-old bet among us demons, whether you mortals will figure it out or not.”

“Should I be insulted?”

Sabo approached just in time to catch the last bits of their exchange. “Probably not,” he said, standing by Ace’s side. “However, it is time to move on.”

Marco glanced up; more than an hour had passed, and he kicked himself for not realizing. “You’re right.”

They left the Waystones, which continued to stand as they always had: silent, unmoving, eternal.

 

*          *          *

 

With the lost hour, the trio barely made it the Alawane before the gates closed for the night. A massive city, Alawane was a central hub for trade and commerce in Whitebeard’s kingdom, as it sat on the intersection between four popular trading routes. Marco, only slightly slowed by the changes to the city since he had last visited years ago, soon found an inn that had rooms available.

The bottom floor of the inn was a taproom with a bar to the left of the door, a stage opposite, and a large hearth to the right. The warm weather meant that the hearth was cold and empty, but the rest of the taproom roared with vibrant life. A musician on the stage played a lyre with incredible skill, directing the room through a myriad of songs.

Sitting once more away from the center of things, Marco listened to the minstrel pluck his way across “Drowsy Sailor,” a popular drinking song. But drinking songs were not all that the minstrel had in his musical arsenal; he interspersed his drinking songs, his catchy songs, and his raucous songs with ballads, laments, and even a hellishly complex piece that Marco had never heard before. The man’s true-red hair and nimble fingers earned him a heavy tip from Marco, who knew that the castle would greatly enjoy a visit from such a talented young man.

While Marco was enjoying the music, Ace seemed to find it grating. Sabo had a comforting hand on Ace’s shoulder—the other occupied with his food—but he didn’t say anything.

When the minstrel gave the room a few minutes’ pause to eat his own meal, Ace stood. The mood of the room had turned from vibrant to more somber as the night wore on; Marco was sure that more than an hour had passed since beginning his meal, but he had barely felt the time go by. Even the most vigilant of drunks were beginning to sway.

Without the music to distract him, Marco got a better look at the inn’s clientele. He identified several lesser nobles, one or two true nobles, and an entire table of off-duty city guards. Clearly, an upper-scale place that was just shy of being dubbed snotty. Marco liked it immediately, and pocketed the name—“The Silver Talent”—for future reference.

“What is he doing?” Marco asked Sabo. Sabo was watching Ace with the same intensity as Marco, but Sabo’s expression held more resignation.

“There was a musician in Luffy’s group. He spent some time teaching Ace to play—Ace played a lot, once Luffy was dead, to remember.” The red-haired minstrel seemed reluctant to hand Ace his instrument but equally reluctant to cause a scene. Ace’s natural charisma soon won him the lyre for a single song. Marco watched him go on stage, as did several other individuals in the room.

Ace sat down on the stool on the center of the stage and cradled the lyre with more care than Marco had seen him devote to anything. He glanced at Sabo, about to ask what he should expect, only for the opening notes of Ace’s song to rob the words from his mouth.

Put simply, it was haunting. Ace spun impossible sounds from simple strings, teasing out a melody that drifted ‘round the room like a fog. Marco stared, dumbstruck; the entire taproom seemed to have fallen silent save for Ace’s playing. Even the minstrel, formerly just nervous, appeared to be floored.

The song picked up in momentum and volume; new, higher notes accompanied the lower ones, and Marco brought a hand up to his cheek and realized he was crying. The song held the faintest trace of magic; not a spell, but pure magic, an outlet for emotion in its rawest form.

He looked to Sabo, who was watching Ace with a stony expression that had cracked around the edges. Tears leaked from Sabo’s eyes.

“What is this?” Marco asked, afraid to disturb the web that Ace had woven but needing to know.

Sabo rubbed his face, swallowing, and shook his head slightly before finally focusing on Marco. He swallowed again, stealing a glance at Ace. “I didn’t—I didn’t think he would play this song. He knows many, but this—it’s. It’s a song of mourning. Very personal.”

“Why would he play it?”

Ace’s song surged and faded, the lyre echoing with a sound not unlike several voices calling in unison.

“I don’t know,” Sabo said quietly, his eyes once more riveted on his brother. “He must—the Waystones. It had to be the Waystones.”

“What happened at the Waystones?”

Sabo shook his head. “It’s a tale I doubt Ace will ever tell. Even I don’t know. He was summoned to the mortal realm centuries ago—well before the Great War—and came back changed. This song—its rhythm is that of the stones.”

Sobered, Marco kept listening while he scanned the crowd. All conversation had died, and more than half the room was either crying or near tears. Ace had timed this song perfectly; any sooner, and it would have sucked the life from the room; any later, and people would have resisted its tune.

The song surged once again and the momentum remained instead of dying out, and for a full minute Marco actively fought a tide of memories, of experiences and faces and locations buried in webs of time-softened pain.

Ace never spoke, never even opened his mouth. He played with nothing on his face and intensity in his posture. All sound came from the lyre, from fingers and strings and wood. The song ended, and Ace had rejoined them at the table before Marco shook himself from the trance.

“It’s called ‘Lament for the Lost,’” Ace said without preamble. His eyes were red, and Marco saw glistening skin where tears had made their tracks. He met Marco’s gaze. “Do not ask me more than that. Please.”

“Of course,” Marco stammered. The rest of the night passed in a blur; the patrons stirred in their seats, the minstrel took up a song to ease the room back into a more joyous state, and Marco spent an extra two coins on an apple pie the brothers helped him finish.

It was only well after the fact that Marco realized he had seen two demons cry.


	5. The Vengeful

“He wasn’t at the stones,” Marco said while he ate an early breakfast in the inn. Ace and Sabo sat on either side of him at the circular table, their eyes scrutinizing the map Marco had laid out. “That leaves the keep and the church. A fifty-fifty shot.”

“Until we factor in the nature of the site,” Sabo pointed out.

“Exactly,” Marco said. “I am confident that Teach travelled this way, but not certain.”

Ace traced their route with his finger, stopping at the keep with his eyes narrowed before he glanced up at Marco. “Why are you so confident? You could have misjudged the nature of the artifact. Maybe Teach needs dead things more than ancient things.”

“That’s possible,” Marco admitted. “The artifact is old, and even the Guild doesn’t have the answers for what it’s capable of.”

“So?” Sabo prodded.

“The tainted sites,” Marco said. He indicated them on the map with quick circles. “We’ve seen two of them, and neither has any apparent meaning, but both had that strange magical taint.”

Ace and Sabo made the connection simultaneously, but Ace spoke first. “You’re saying it’s the artifact. Teach is—what, practicing with it?”

“I believe so,” Marco confirmed. “I’m sure he knows he’s being followed—though whether or not he knows it’s me is up for debate. He must be trying to find ways to defend himself.”

“I thought he’s an ogre,” Sabo said, scrutinizing the map as though it held the answers.

“Half-ogre. And a fairly powerful magician.”

“Lovely,” Ace muttered.

“However, if he needs practice with the artifact, I think we’ll have a chance even if he does get to the site well before we do. He’s inexperienced. Stumbling.”

“I don’t like the thought of facing a man with a powerful weapon who can’t even control it,” Sabo said. “Just because he can’t aim the spell doesn’t mean we won’t get caught in it.”

“Then I have a suggestion,” Ace said, standing. “Why don’t we get a move on and catch this bastard before he has the chance?”

“I like that plan,” Sabo said.

 

*          *          *

 

“What…the Hells…is that,” Ace said, eyes fixed on the horizon. They had been walking for just under two days and Marco knew they were getting within a few hours of Teach.

“I don’t see anything,” Marco said, squinting. Sabo snapped his fingers and Marco’s sight sharpened to an almost nauseating degree—enough to see the smoke drifting up by the horizon. “Smoke?”

“Looks like it,” Sabo said. He snapped his fingers again and Marco’s vision returned to normal. Marco staggered and shot Sabo a baleful look, but the demon was still quite focused on the horizon. “We need to get there. Quickly.”

“I’d say we’re within a day’s—”

“Nope,” Ace said, stopping to stretch. “Faster than that.” He grinned, and Marco suddenly got a very, very bad feeling. “Say, Marco. You’re not prone to wagon-sickness, are you?”

“No,” Marco replied slowly, watching the two demons crack their knuckles. “Why?”

“No reason.”

Sabo snapped his fingers a third time and Marco’s world turned upside-down. When it snapped back into focus, Marco turned to his left and promptly vomited.

“Whoa!” Ace danced out of range. “Watch the boots, your magicalness.”

“It’s my fault,” Sabo said without a hint of remorse in his voice. Marco had the strong suspicion he’d been doing it intentionally, a kind of payback he would never admit to. “Too many body-altering spells when you’re not expecting them can lead to severe nausea.”

“Right,” Marco grunted, cleaning himself up quickly before he stood straight. Ace and Sabo had teleported them to the road right in front of the smoking area. Marco’s eyes went wide when he pieced together where they were. “No.”

Ace and Sabo exchanged a look. Ace stepped forward. “Marco? What’s wrong? What is it?”

But Marco couldn’t tear his eyes away from the charred wooden posts standing where the town’s wooden gates had been. He knew this place for all that it looked nothing like the place in his memories. He walked forward in a daze, not caring that the lingering smoke stung his eyes and burned his throat. Small fires still sputtered in the burned-out skeletons of buildings. The thatch roofs had all gone up like tinder, leaves just the sturdy beams to stand like blackened bones.

Heedless of the rubble beneath his feet, Marco kept going until he reached the main plaza. The fountain was gone; Marco looked around until he found its pieces scattered around as though some careless giant’s hand had smashed the marble. Old echoes wound around his brain, trying to subsume the unnatural silence hanging about the plaza: laughter, conversation, merchants hawking their wares. But there was nothing actually there except the fitful sputtering of dying flames and the wind whistling through hollowed-out homes.

He didn’t know when he stopped moving, but at some point, he did. He stopped moving and the world stopped with him; the tears weren’t just from the smoke and the knife in his chest was being twisted over and again—

“Marco?”

He jerked away from Ace’s touch, but the demon didn’t back away. “Marco, what’s going on?” Ace pressed. “What is this place?”

“The map said it was a town called Anilin,” Sabo murmured, looking around. “This destruction is recent.  Perhaps an hour or two.” He wrinkled his nose. “The taint is so strong I can practically feel it on my skin.”

Marco barely heard them. He sank to his knees, eyes riveted to the small, burnt body just a few yards away. The smell of burning flesh hung in the air like the smoke burning Marco’s eyes.

He felt sick.

“Marco.” Ace crouched in front of him. He had his bandana over his mouth but his eyes were hard and focused. “Marco, talk to us. What is this place?”

“Anilin,” Marco managed, focusing on the name. “A small outpost that grew to a town as a rest stop between Alawane and the forts on the kingdom’s border.”

“I don’t want a history lesson,” Ace growled, grabbing Marco’s shoulders and squeezing. “I want to know why it has you _czichen_ catatonic.”

The infernal curse, combined with the pain of Ace’s fingers digging into his flesh, was enough to snap Marco out of his daze. He swallowed, taking in the destruction with new eyes. Without the comforting blanket of shock, the smells and taint to the air hit him full force and he gagged. He managed to wrap his cape around his face and neck, but his lungs still felt scorched. He glanced back at the dead child, feeling rage kindle in the ashes of his grief.

“I grew up here,” Marco said when he stood. He swallowed. “Anilin. My hometown.”

Ace looked around, expression impossible to read. “You had family here?”

Marco shook his head. “I was an orphan. The orphanage is—was,” he corrected, voice cracking while he pointed—“down that way.”

None of them had to check to know that there were no survivors. Marco shook from the war between grief and fury raging inside his mind.

 They searched for survivors for almost an hour but found none, just charred hunks of flesh. Marco went numb. They finally stopped on the edge of the town, where cut-down trees had yet to be stripped of their branches and added to the town’s defensive wall.

Ace picked up a broken branch and watched with empty eyes as it broke apart into dust in his hand and cascaded to the ground in a grey-black stream.

“I think,” he said, speaking slowly, his eyes still on his ash-covered hand, “that it’s time you tell us exactly what kind of artifact we’re going up against.”

Sabo, who had been examining magic residue nearby, glanced at Marco. “It’s long past time,” he said. “Right now, you have us going in blind against a foe with the power to do _this_.” He gestured sharply at the destroyed town and then stood, wiping off his hands. “What is this artifact?” He began to put his gloves back on. “Its purpose? Its limits?” His second glove snapped into place. “Its weaknesses?”

Marco took a deep breath, trusting his cape to filter out the toxins and taint in the air. Having something other than the destruction to focus on helped.

“You two already know it,” he said. He considered his next words carefully. “After you told me about Luffy, Ace, I thought—I suspected—that the amulet in your story and the artifact Teach stole were one and the same. The way you two have been reacting to its lingering taint confirms it.”

Ace’s eyes sparked but Sabo reacted first, his glamour disappearing while he bared his fangs. “You cannot be serious. That cursed thing should have been destroyed.”

Marco shook his head. “According to the texts, my clan tried, but could not manage it. So we locked it away.”

“And waited for someone like Teach to steal it,” Ace snarled. His glamour had disappeared as well, and his tail lashed back and forth. “That _inflike_ amulet has caused pain and suffering the likes of which mortals can only begin to understand, and you were so careless with it.”

Though Marco wanted to protest, he knew Ace was right. “I can’t argue that. All we can do is get it back before Teach awakens it.”

“Get it back, and then what?” Ace asked. “Wait for it to fall into someone else’s hands again?”

Marco shook his head, a grim line of determination pulling his mind out of its numbed state. “No. We destroy it.”

“I thought you said—” Sabo started.

“The old magicians did not have two demon princes at their side,” Marco said flatly. “That amulet cost me my hometown and nearly cost me my sworn brother. No more.”

He stood, and purpose weighed heavy on his shoulders. “We find Teach. We bring him to justice. And we destroy the amulet.”

Sensing Marco’s rage, the two demons exchanged a glance. “What do you mean when you say justice?” Sabo asked.

Marco set off at a brisk walk. “I haven’t decided yet.”

But he was thinking a rather painful death would suffice.


	6. The Reckoning

They caught up to Teach at the keep. He had two allies: a marksman wielding some kind of magical projectile-launcher and a berserker. Those two he posted at the gate while he fled deeper inside the crumbling, gray-tinged ruins.

"Ace, Sabo," Marco began, but the demons were already moving. Their glamours—previously maintained in case they happened upon a traveler—disappeared, revealing their true demonic forms.

"Oh, I've been waiting for this," Ace said. His dagger appeared again, but this time, the weapon was pure fire, contained in the shape of a blade and burning so hot it hurt to look at. Magical energy swirled around Sabo like clouds gathering for a storm; the air grew heavy, and Marco realized that Sabo actually was calling upon nature's fury.

Ace darted forward with a cry, emerging from the trees and crossing the rotting drawbridge in the blink of an eye. He sidestepped the marksman's first shot and deflected the second; the third never came. Marco's hair stood on end, his teeth ached, and then a bolt of lightning streaked down from the sky and struck the marksman with lethal accuracy. The man, skin blackened and burned, fell dead. His companion, who had met Ace halfway across the bridge, escaped the lightning blast, but his fate was no better. Ace used his superior speed to dodge the man's inhumanly strong blows, his dagger cutting away at the man's flesh but cauterizing the wounds so he wouldn't bleed to death.

Marco realized, then, that Ace's weapon was designed for suffering. Watching Ace whittle away at the berserker, who probably wasn't feeling much of the pain anyway, Marco couldn't find it in himself to disprove of it.

Ace was a blur of motion to Marco's eyes, but he must have slipped up; the berserker caught him with a hard punch to the chest that sent Ace flying back into the dried-up moat. Kicking up a cloud of dust, Ace skidded for several yards before he planted his hands behind his head and flipped back to his feet.

"Oh, you've done it now," the demon growled. The red in his eyes grew brighter and he disappeared. No, he didn't—Marco's head pounded with the effort of keeping track of him. The berserker roared in frustration, but the sound suddenly cut off; the berserker's head slid off his neck, and the now-headless body hovered for a second before folding. Ace casually stepped to the side while the body exploded into flames until there was nothing left but ash.

"You were sloppy," Sabo chastised when he and Marco caught up to Ace. Ace shrugged.

"Yeah, but I got the kinks out." He nodded at the gaping maw that lead into the keep, his expression gaining previously unseen gravity. "Shall we?"

Marco shook his head. "One moment."

He lifted his staff, taking the spell he'd been preparing for the past two hours, and slammed the wood into the stone just outside the doorway. Magic lines shimmered to life and shot upwards and outwards, latticing through the air and creating an intricate spiderweb of glowing strands. Spell complete, Marco straightened. The spell had cost nearly the entirety of the energy contained in one of his crystals, but it was worth it.

"He will not be escaping this place," Marco said.

As Marco led the way through the keep, he could feel Ace and Sabo looking around without having to turn around. Their clear distaste for the place resonated with the taint in the air. Marco shivered as ancient magic, not yet succumbed to time, brushed against his skin. He could understand why the locals avoided this place.

The ground shook. Marco kept his balance, and the tremor passed within a few seconds, but he knew that it wasn't a good sign.

"We need to pick up the pace," Ace said. "I'm going ahead."

"Ace, wait," Sabo said, catching Ace's shoulder before he could take more than a single step. "That's exactly what you did last time."

Ace froze. "Oh," he said quietly.

"We go together," Sabo said, giving Ace's shoulder a squeeze before he let go. He then glanced at Marco. "I'll keep a protection spell going. We can afford to be a little reckless if it means getting to Teach faster."

Marco nodded. Sabo launched the spell, and the trio took off at a sprint. Two more tremors rocked the keep while they travelled through weather-worn, ruined halls. Mold grew on the remnants of tapestries and plant life had sprung up all over the floor, making movement treacherous. They were forced to slow to a jog, and then a fast walk, and then an agonizing crawl while they picked their way to the keep's lower levels. Centuries-old traps lined the walls and floors; Teach had triggered some of them, but Marco knew better than to think that a rusty crossbow bolt or weak magic blast would end this battle before it had to begin.

"Here," Ace said, stopping by a door that had all but rotted off its hinges. "The stairs are behind this door."

Marco eyed where the wood had splintered from a recent impact. Teach, undoubtedly. "We'd best hurry."

Ace stayed in front, fire flickering along his shoulders to light the way. The stairway wound tightly to the left around a central pillar slick with mold and mildew. Marco wrinkled his nose at the earthy smell that ebbed and flowed under the taint in the air, but Sabo's spell kept the worst of it away.

The atmosphere grew thicker the farther down they descended; Marco waved a hand through the air just to make sure it wasn't actually different, and Sabo noticed.

"It's the magic," he said quietly. "You've never felt this before?"

Marco shook his head. "This keep is marked as a forbidden site. Nothing I have experienced before can compare."

"Fitting," Ace muttered from up front. "We're almost to the bottom."

They emerged from the cramped stairwell into a massive chamber that dwarfed Marco's summoning room back in the castle. Ancient wards, long since broken or faded to nothing, decorated the cracked stone walls and shattered floor. The lingering magic was so strong that Marco struggled to breathe; no wonder this site had been marked forbidden. A lesser mage would suffocate.

Gritting his teeth, Marco opened a cut on his finger and drew a quick symbol of protection on his wrist. The blood glowed with magic before fading into his skin like a tattoo. Blood spells were technically taboo, but Marco needed its immediate and lasting power to combat this stifling atmosphere.

That done, Marco searched the room for Teach. The massive man was easy to find. He stood on the opposite side of the room, eyes riveted on the faded mural just barely visible under the layers of grime.

"Marco, I should have known you'd come," Teach called without turning around. Marco, staff in hand, barely paused in his chanting. Teach turned around and Marco saw the telltale glimmer of the amulet around his neck. Ace and Sabo tensed; Ace hissed something under his breath that set Marco's skin crawling. "Look at this place, zehahaha! Wreck and ruin—it's a fitting place for the start of a new age."

"Doubtful," Marco said between chants, not caring whether Teach heard him or not. The traitor seemed to notice Marco's companions for the first time.

"What's this? New friends?"

Ace stepped forward, and the fire around him changed; it wasn't fire flickering across Ace's skin anymore. No, Ace's skin _was_ fire. His whole arm, in fact. "You can call us that," he said, cocking his fist. Teach's eyes widened with realization in the second before Ace threw his punch.

Infernal flames roared from his fist, a column of raging inferno tearing across the floor with heat so intense that Sabo's protection spell flickered into visibility from the strain. Marco squinted his eyes, putting up one arm and nearly losing the delicate thread of magic he'd been weaving.

The flames sputtered out after a few seconds. The floor had melted from the heat, stone pooling in steaming puddles while it hardened. Sweat stuck Marco's clothes to his skin; Sabo and Ace looked entirely unfazed, but Ace suddenly stiffened.

"What in the Hells?" he said, dropping into a defensive stance. Across the room, Teach stood unharmed. He grinned, golden tooth flashing while the thin protective sphere around him flickered and faded.

"Zehahaha! Deals with demons, Marco? How shameful for the Phoenix Clan head!"

"Shut up," Marco growled. Just a few more seconds—that was all he needed. "I don't want to hear anything from a traitor and murderer."

"Oh, right." Teach's grin widened. "That idiot Thatch was your friend, wasn't he?"

He was more than that and Teach damn well knew it. Marco and Thatch were sworn brothers.

Enough.

Marco raised his staff, holding it horizontally out in front of him. The crystal at the top shone with power. Finishing the chant, Marco turned the staff vertical and slammed the bottom into the floor. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Even Ace and Sabo looked confused, and Teach drew breath for another jeer—

The ground exploded. Earth Golems clawed their way out from cracked stones and melted pools. The twenty-foot creatures, all six of them, lumbered towards Teach with footsteps that shook the room. Marco felt the shakes of magic depletion hitting him and pulled a second crystal from his bag. Crushing it in his hands, Marco drew a breath while new power flooded into him.

He could almost hear Thatch lecturing him for recklessness, but Marco knew speed was of the essence.

Sabo had been drawing in the air ever since Marco's golems roared their way into existence. He finished with a flourish and then slammed a hand into the glowing runes hovering in the air. Uttering an infernal word that slid just to the right of Marco's perception, Sabo shoved power into the runes.

The golems glowed with new power as spells of protection, strength, and speed hit each one. Ace, recognizing that the battle was long-distance for the moment, waited, his dagger held in impatient fingers.

"How long until the amulet is activated?" Ace asked, watching the golems advance. Teach looked worryingly unconcerned by the impending destruction.

"No way to know for sure," Sabo replied tightly. He had more spells forming and Marco followed his example; as the first golem reached Teach, a plethora of smaller spells smashed down on the traitor. Lightning mixed with water from Sabo; fire mixed with wind from Marco. Soon, dust completely obscured that section of the room.

All they could do was watch, so they waited as the first golem attacked—and exploded.

Marco blinked. Chunks of rock rained down around him, scattered all throughout the room. The second golem erupted into pieces a second later, then the third; the last three attacked all at once and the impact of their blocky fists slamming into the ground forced Marco to stagger or risk falling.

But all three met the same fate as their predecessors. Marco watched, shock and horror warring for dominance in his mind, as the creatures legendary for their durability and strength broke apart into little more than rubble.

Teach's terrible laugh echoed around the room. "Marco! You'll have to try harder than this to beat me!"

Through the clearing dust, Marco saw Teach glowing with magical power. The amulet around his neck pulsed with magic so dense that it hurt Marco's eyes to see. Teach's expression became sadistic.

"My turn."

Even though the glowing wards that had been lighting the room did not change in brightness, the entire chamber seemed to dim. Marco's blood mark glowed with heat as the magic it contained battled against the new taint in the air. Sabo grit his teeth and a new protection spell shimmered over his skin while Ace bared his teeth in challenge. The black-haired demon had always shown a greater resistance to magical taint than Sabo, but even he had gone pale in the face of the dark magic swirling through the air.

Teach stood in the epicenter of the dark, a black hole in space. Black matter twisted and warped around him, distorting the ground and air so that it appeared to be a sea of writhing blackness.

Revulsion leeched at Marco's focus. To have the protected amulet, the proud possession of the Phoenix Clan for generations, be the source of such dark power—the scholars had always hypothesized that it was some great gift from the angels, but Marco now questioned that.

Working in tandem with Sabo, Marco and the demon crafted a shield that held the sea of darkness at bay. Teach just laughed; more and more power poured out of the amulet with every second.

"I think," Sabo grunted, face streaked with sweat from the effort of keeping up the barrier, "that the amulet has awakened."

"No wonder it left such a taint," Marco agreed. His newly-replenished energy was draining swiftly, making his muscles shake. Too much more of this and he'd get magic sickness from rapid depletion and replenishing of his own magic stores, and then he would be of no help at all.

Ace stepped forward.

"Ace," Sabo warned. "Don't be reckless."

The elder demon stared at the barrier. No flames danced across his skin; he was a sun contained, a shell brimming with energy just below the surface.

"I am done," Ace said, "holding myself back. I was too careful last time, and I acted too late to save Luffy." He held up his dagger; Marco could just barely see his right eye, which was focused on the blade, heedless of the darkness washing up against the barrier mere yards from where he stood. "Never again."

He flipped the dagger around and plunged it into his own chest. Shocked, Marco could only stare as the dagger turned to pure flame that washed over Ace's chest like water. Ace glanced back at Sabo as his whole body glowed with heat.

"You'd better put a shield up," he said through lips glowing orange with flames ready to burst into life.

Sabo muttered something about two shields for two idiots, but, with Marco's help, he put up a heat shield right as Ace exploded. His body disappeared into a maelstrom of flames that passed through the shield holding back the dark and crashed into the sea of black like a miniature star.

Marco squinted past the light and found Teach. The traitor's eyes were wide with surprise and he'd taken a step back in fear. Savage pleasure ripped through Marco at the sight.

Ace's fire grew in intensity with each passing second, bending the air and burning away any darkness that got too close. Closer and closer to Teach; closer and closer, but not close enough. Teach reached the mural, froze with fear, and then clutched the amulet while throwing out a hand as though he could halt Ace's progress.

To Marco's horror, a stream of darkness shot out from Teach's hand and slammed directly into the epicenter of Ace's inferno. The fire shuddered and then sucked in on itself, eventually forming a humanoid figure. That figure had its arms crossed in a vain attempt to block the stream of dark magic. Infernal flames warred with tainted energy in a losing battle. Sabo was already casting a spell, but Marco moved faster. He'd been pulling out crystals and their lattice on the floor echoed with contained power.

Chanting the spell, Marco finished by slamming his palm in the center of the circle. The crystals rang like bells and a shockwave spread out from the circle, passing through the barrier and ripping through the darkness, banishing it to the ether just in time for Ace to fall in a cleared section, his fire sputtering out while he coughed up streams of dark magic.

"ACE!" Sabo roared, all the warning Marco got before the demon launched a barrage of spells powerful enough to make Marco's teeth ache. Teach got lit up like the sky during a thunderstorm, distracting him just long enough for Sabo to recover his brother and get them both to a safe distance.

" _Inflike_ …mortals…" Ace coughed when Sabo deposited him on the floor. The demon looked sickly and pale, and black matter dripped from his mouth. He immediately rolled onto his stomach and retched; more black matter pooled beneath him while Ace shook.

Sabo looked back at Teach, who was still reeling from Sabo's offensive. The traitor had a few burns on his skin, but little else.

"That amulet—it has a weakness, right?" Sabo asked, looking to Marco. "It was in your care for hundreds of years. You had to find something."

Marco shook his head while he cast spells of healing and spells of purging on Ace to help him clear the taint of black magic from his system. "Nothing."

" _Czichen,_ " Sabo cursed.

All three of them felt the wave of power. Ace sat up, waving off more help, while Marco stared at Teach. The traitor had another sea of roiling black around him, but now it was spreading slowly, inexorably towards them. The barrier Sabo and Marco had been maintaining cracked and shattered, making Marco wince.

"That's a problem," Sabo said. He launched a light spell—designed specifically to combat dark magic—but it fizzled into nothing when it made contact. "That's even more of a problem."

Half-dragging Ace, Marco and Sabo backed up while Marco thought furiously. His crystals were almost out of power, as was he. That shockwave purification spell had taken an enormous amount of energy and he doubted it would be enough to do more than slow Teach down now.

"Zehahaha! What were the rules of summoning a demon, Marco?"

Teach had advanced several feet, and his previous fear was squashed beneath an outpouring of smug superiority.

"It seems you don't remember." Teach grinned. "Let me remind you: if the summoner dies, the demons die with him!"

Movement in his peripheral vision had Marco crying out a warning to Sabo while he dove to one side, pulling Ace with him. He didn't see what became of the blond demon; a tide of black had crashed between them, blocking Sabo from sight. That tide rushed after Marco. Fortunately, Ace had gathered enough strength to run, and the two sprinted to a corner.

Ace launched fireballs at the darkness, which slowed it down and even burned it away in some places, but it inexorably advanced.

Marco prepared another barrier, knowing he was only slowing the inevitable but not caring. The amulet may be awakened now, but it had to have limited power. If Marco could just buy some ti—

His thoughts scattered. Choking, Marco glanced down and saw a spear of darkness sticking out of his chest. Suddenly weak hands gripped the solid manifestation of black magic but couldn't do anything else. Marco twisted his neck and caught sight of a small pool of black behind him—the source of the weapon. Echoes of pain hit Marco's brain as though his nerves couldn't handle the sudden influx and so threw up pathetic imitations of what it was supposed to feel like.

"Marco!" Ace cried, reaching over, but shackles of darkness wrapped around his wrists and held him fast. The demon's eyes flashed and he roared, but every time he broke through, more chains wrapped around his limbs. Marco stared at Ace. He didn't know what to say. He didn't even know if he could speak.

The spear retreated back into its pool and Marco collapsed. His vision, red around the edges, grew darker by the second. His heart pounded, pushing the life out of his body faster and faster, but he couldn't even lift a finger to cast a healing spell.

His clothes' protection spells had done nothing. Marco thought of the castle, of Thatch, of all the people in Teach's path. If he couldn't stop the traitor here, how many would die?

He coughed, his body spasming.

It wasn't a question of "if" anymore. He'd failed.

The icy heat of the black magic turned uncomfortably hot. Marco closed his eyes, which were too heavy to keep open anymore. He'd never been afraid of fire, of heat; his reckless determination to learn fire magic in his youth was what had caught the king's attention. But here, now, the fire spawned no wonder, no awe. It just hurt.

Someone was shaking him. He couldn't focus on the voice. Like a person yelling two rooms away, really. Far away. More than two rooms.

Two rooms. Marco wondered why two was important.

The shaking got more insistent. Marco let it wash over him like the heat burning his skin. Everything was warm. Everything was quiet.

Everything—

Was _burning_.

The heat was pain and the pain was agony and the agony was a bright, breathtaking blue shot through with flashes of molten gold. It burned and it burned and everything melted; his bones his skin his muscle his mind, nothing could overcome the tide of blue phoenix fire.

With the feeling he was falling, Marco jerked upwards, a shout on his lips, and opened his eyes.

Blue. It spread around him in a ten-foot-high wall, hiding everything beyond. The fire poured from Marco's chest, completely obscuring the wound there. Ace lay a few feet away, blown off his feet, dazed eyes meeting Marco's.

"Marco?" Ace whispered, staring. Marco swallowed and glanced down at himself once more. The fire kept coming from some source Marco couldn't locate inside himself, but it didn't feel alien.

" _Inflike_ , Marco," Ace said, slowly pushing himself up. His arm noticeably shook and Marco saw a deep gash in his wrist, visible through the black magic burns slashing across his skin. "You should've told me you were an actual phoenix."

Phoenix?

Marco touched the fire. It didn't burn; it was barely warm at all. He'd heard tales, of course, from the previous clan head; that the founder of the clan had been a true phoenix, that she had passed down her blood through the generations, that someone would inevitably have the innate magical power to unlock the phoenix's potential, but here, now, staring at his chest, Marco could only think: _me?_

"Marco," Ace said, and Marco realized that the demon had been saying his name for a while. He glanced up and saw that the walls were falling. Black magic quickly subsumed their entrancing blue light. Teach's attack hadn't stopped.

Ace suddenly collapsed, his arm giving out from beneath him. Marco rushed to his side; by the time he reached Ace, the hole in his chest had closed and the fire had faded to the faintest flickers along Marco's skin.

"Marco," Ace hissed, grabbing Marco's wrist before he could touch the demon. Ace's skin was hot, feverishly so. "Not me. That." He nodded at the summoning circle next to him that Marco hadn't even noticed before. It was drawn in blood— _Ace's_ blood. "Your power—the phoenix, with my blood—it should be enough." He coughed, and more black magic painted his lips. " _Inflike_ mortal magic. Do it, Marco. Do it _now_. Before the black tide washes it away."

With the sea of black—which now seemed more like a wall, having built on itself to be several feet in height—closing in, Marco knelt over the circle. He didn't understand most of the symbols, and the true name carved in the center wasn't one Marco knew. It wasn't common practice to actually inscribe the true name of the summoned being in the circle—it was too easy to mistake one character for another, and far too easy for another to steal the name.

"Marco!" Ace shouted, startling the mage. "Now!" The demon's eyes were wide with urgency, and Marco suddenly remembered that Sabo was somewhere in the room as well. On his own, the demon stood no chance.

Marco's staff had been lost when he had pulled Ace out of the way of Teach's earlier attack, but he didn't need it now. The phoenix's power still flowed through him, just not visibly. He pressed his palms together and focused, drawing on decades of magical training to tame the wild power flowing through his veins.

When the black magic was less than a foot from Ace's prone, semiconscious body, Marco's power surged and he slammed his hands down on the true name. Blue fire flooded out from his hands, following the lines of blood and igniting the spell. Line after line connected, ignited, until—

Time stood still. Marco's breath froze in his lungs; the entire room grew dark, light unchanged but fading and tinted red. Gravity doubled, tripled, and a wave of power slammed into Marco and threw him into the wall. The impact shocked the breath out of him but Marco found he could breathe again even as his eyes strained to understand the world with all but three colors—red and grey and black—seemingly gone. Even the tide of black magic had halted, and Teach, hands upraised to direct the magic, was staring at Marco with shock painted over his features. No more arrogance; not even Teach had seen this turn coming.

The circle, now glowing with deep red light, grew brighter and brighter until Marco had to shield his eyes. When he lowered his arm, a woman stood over the circle. Color had returned to the world with her appearance. She wore a layered blue dress with a regal red cape. Black horns, one decorated with a blood-red flower, spiraled out from a head of strawberry blond hair.

The woman let out a breath and the flow of time resumed. She glanced back at Marco, one eyebrow raised, and Marco struggled not to fold under the ancient weight of her gaze.

"A human summoned me?" Her voice was surprisingly calm and had an almost musical lilt to it. Her lips pressed into a frown and she looked around the room. Her eyes landed on Ace, who was now unconscious and about to be overcome by black magic. "What is this?" she asked. She stepped forward, almost gliding, and kneeled next to Ace. She waved a hand and the black magic ceased advancing. She looked back at Marco, her eyes hard. "Who did this to my son?"

Realization crashed down on Marco like ice water, dousing the last of his phoenix fire. This was no ordinary demon.

This was Rogue, the Demon Queen.

"I—" he started, struggling for words.

"MOM!"

The shout came from across the room. Marco looked across the sea of black and saw Sabo pinned against the wall by spears of darkness. The demon had blood coating his usually immaculate clothes.

"It's the man!" Sabo continued, heedless of the black magic tainting his very blood. "The amulet!"

"Amulet?" Rogue repeated. Then, recognizing Sabo's situation, her frown turned angry. "Not one of my sons, but both?" She turned to Teach, whose fear had turned to terror. Her eyes found the pulsing artifact resting on his chest. "I know that amulet. Its magic is not usually so dark; you have corrupted it with your thieving, murdering hands." Rogue stood after weaving a healing spell around Ace. Marco blinked; all she'd done was press two fingers to Ace's forehead, yet Marco could almost see the magical energy returning to the demon, healing his wounds and replenishing his strength.

Rogue snapped her fingers and the black magic vanished. Sabo crumpled to the floor and Rogue cast a healing spell on him as well with a flick of her wrist. Teach backed up a few steps, fumbling for a spell, but the demon queen gave him no quarter.

"I sense that you are the source of the darkness I felt surging in this world," she said. Teach quailed. Rogue lifted a hand—

"Wait," Marco said, hardly believing what he was doing. Rogue glanced back at him, clearly not pleased with being interrupted. "He's my responsibility," Marco said, drawing strength from Teach's fear.

Rogue looked between Teach and Marco before her expression cleared. "Very well." She waved her hand and Teach crumpled, unconscious. Magical bindings snapped into place around him, leaving him with little more than the ability to breathe. Rogue walked up to him, unfazed by the broken ground, and removed the amulet from around his neck. She held it aloft and considered it for a long moment. In that time, both Ace and Sabo stirred; Ace looked first to Marco and, seeing the magician's awestruck state, looked to Rogue.

"Mom," he whispered. Rogue favored him with a smile, but her expression turned serious when she returned her attention to the amulet.

"This little thing has caused great pain, human and demon alike," she said. "I have seen it bring forth enough suffering for a thousand generations; no longer."

Cracks spread down the amulet's chain from where Rogue gripped it between her fingers. The cracks reached the jewel set in the amulet's pendant and then, for an instant, stopped.

Then the amulet burst into a thousand glimmering pieces. The sudden release of magic nearly blew Marco from his feet. The shockwave set his magical senses reeling and he struggled to hold back a tide of nausea. He recovered, but it wasn't a fast process. Rogue was still there when he looked to her again, but the amulet was gone. The shards remained, but whatever magic they had contained had been released in that shockwave. There was no bringing it back.

"Mom," Ace said, staggering to his feet. Rogue glanced at him, and then at Sabo, who was making his slow, pained way over to his brother.

"You aided this human in summoning me, didn't you?" Rogue asked. Ace nodded. Sabo reached Ace's side and cleared his throat.

"We had no other option. Teach's corruption of the amulet risked too much. He had to be stopped."

Rogue sighed. "I have not been summoned to this realm for more than a thousand years." She looked to Marco, and her expression softened. "A phoenix. Very rare."

Marco didn't know what to say. Rogue collected herself.

"Phoenix, as a gesture of goodwill, I ask you to know and remember these two things: one, the demon's blessing is upon you; and two, that you will never again know the pain of death. Yours now is the life of an immortal. Live it wisely."

Marco swallowed. "I will. Thank you."

Rogue stepped towards Ace and Sabo and embraced them both. "My sons," she murmured, "it has been too long since the three of us walked together upon this plane." She held them at arm's length. "Unfortunately, I cannot stay. Though your mage has the strength to anchor you two here, he cannot withstand my presence for much longer."

Marco felt fine, but he got the feeling that Rogue knew more about this kind of thing than he did.

"We can—" Ace started.

"No," Rogue interrupted, fondly placing a palm on Ace's cheek. "You should stay here. Your mage seems a good man. Relearn the rules of this realm, and teach him how to be immortal." Her eyes glimmered with humor. "A life without death is measured in companionship, not time."

The demons ducked their heads. Rogue hugged them one last time, backed up a step, and disappeared in the same instant that a tide of exhaustion swept through Marco's mind.

Marco blacked out.


	7. The End

When Marco returned to the castle with two glamoured demons at his side and Teach in chains, he wasn’t sure what to expect. His mission had been a secret; for all the castle inhabitants knew, Marco had disappeared without a trace. But when he stepped through the gates, a massive crowd of soldiers, magicians, and castle inhabitants was there to greet him.

Soldiers rushed forward and took Teach away while Thatch—evidently well on his way to recovery—bounded across the cobblestones and swept Marco into a bone-crushing hug.

“Can’t—breathe,” Marco gasped, and Thatch set him down without letting go of Marco’s shoulders. The knight’s expression was uncomfortably serious, and Marco wondered if he’d missed something.

“Don’t you _ever_ ,” Thatch said, “and I mean _ever_ , do something like that again.”

And then he pulled Marco into another hug, his voice breaking. “You disappeared and I knew—I knew you’d gone after him, but he’s dangerous, and you—my gods, Marco, when the scouts reported in I thought—”

“Thatch, Thatch, I’m okay,” Marco said, cutting off his friend’s flood of worry. “I’m fine. I came back.”

“I know, you bastard,” Thatch said into Marco’s shoulder while he squeezed tighter. “I know.”

 

*          *          *

 

Marco maintained that Ace and Sabo were old acquaintances from the Northern Tundra, and Thatch—though his suspicions were clear—backed him up. No one wanted to correct the wounded knight or the man who had brought the traitor back, so Ace and Sabo kept up their glamours and lived alongside Marco in the magician’s massive chambers.

Thatch returned to active duty under the careful eye of Kureha. Marco kept his status as a phoenix a secret, known only to him, two demon princes, and a demon queen.

Ace used the summoning chamber like a concert hall. Most days, Marco could hear him playing an instrument. Sabo either watched or helped Marco tinker with and refine spells. The blond demon seemed to enjoy the work, and his brother the peace.

It was inevitable, then, that something would disrupt it.

 

*          *          *

 

Marco and Sabo were in the middle of experimenting with lightning magic when someone knocked on Marco’s door.

“Come in,” Marco called, stepping back from the symbols chalked onto the walls. Sabo stayed on task while Marco greeted the guest. It was a messenger, panting from the long climb to Marco’s quarters and offering a written note.

“From the king,” the messenger gasped.

“The king?” Ace repeated, dropping down from the rafters and scaring the poor messenger half to death.

“Ace,” Marco warned, and the demon lifted his palms and backed off. Marco scanned the paper, his eyebrows shooting up. “This doesn’t seem to be the area of a Court Magician.”

“The king said that he can’t formally intervene, but if a certain magician prone to disappearing would…er, disappear, then—”

“Hm.” Marco burned the note after reading the instruction to do so and sent the messenger away before he closed the door and faced his two companions, who had moved to stand next to each other in expectation.

“Well?” Sabo asked. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”

Marco sighed, wondering how he was supposed to phrase this to two demons who were still learning the basics of human culture and geography. “Well…you recall the Eastern Isles, right?”

Sabo and Ace exchanged a look. “Yeah,” Sabo said, indicating his attire with a gesture, “I think I do.”

Marco spent a second marveling at how his life had come to this point and then decided to be level with them. “It appears that there is a bit of a revolution going on there, and the leaders have requested assistance.”

Ace’s eyes lit up. “A revolution?” He smiled wide and threw an arm around Sabo. “Gods, it’s been ages since we’ve been in one of those!”

Sabo smiled, reciprocating Ace’s gesture. “Sounds like we have another adventure on our hands.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I did writing it.


End file.
